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The Michigan City Municipal Band (MCMB) will begin its 157th season on Thursday, June 5, 7:30p, at the Guy F. Foreman Bicentennial Amphitheater in Washington Park. The MCMB is sponsored by the City of Michigan City.

The MCMB’s 157th season will consist of ten free concerts, beginning June 5, and ending August 7. The band plays a wide variety of music, with concerts designed to entertain audience members of all ages. The MCMB also plays for the annual Memorial Day ceremony at Greenwood Cemetery, and in the Michigan City Patriotic Parade. With one exception, all of the concerts will be performed on Thursdays at 7:30p, and will last about an hour. On June 19, the concert will take place at 4:30p as part of the Michigan City Juneteenth Celebration. The Juneteenth MCMB concert will be followed that evening by a performance of The Reggie Foster Experience.

Highlights of the MCMB summer concert series include special guest soloists and three commissions by acclaimed composers. Guest artists will be GySgt. Hiram Diaz, euphonium, from the US Marine Band (July 31); Carnessa Carnes, narrator (June 19); Anne Marie Bice, soprano (June 26, July 24, and August 7), Richard Liwosz, clarinet (June 26); Dr. Lauren Hartman, soprano (July 10); Charles Steck and Ryan Rabe, trumpets (July 24). Other soloists and special events will be announced during the season.

The MCMB will present the premieres of three commissions:

Winds Across the Water by Erika Svanoe (June 5 and again on July 10 and August 7)

Yearning to Breathe Free by Michele Fernandez (July 24 and August 7)

Rhapsody for Euphonium by Kevin Day (July 31)

Erika Svanoe is a composer and conductor from Wisconsin. Winds Across the Water contains melodies and intervals inspired by Dr. Svanoe’s impressions of the Michigan City Lighthouse, and the breeze felt by standing at the edge of Lake Michigan in Washington Park. Michele Fernandez is a composer and conductor from Florida. Yearning to Breathe Free is a tribute to The Statue of Liberty, as we prepare to celebrate USA 250 in 2026. Kevin Day is a composer from California. His Rhapsody for Euphonium will showcase the band with world-class euphonium soloist GySgt. Hiram Diaz from the US Marine Band, “The President’s Own.”

On June 19, the MCMB will also reprise its 2024 premiere of Michigan City composer Dan Schaaf’s composition Remembering Naomi. The work honors Naomi Anderson, African-American suffragist and Michigan City Native. Naomi’s words will be narrated by Michigan City’s Carnessa Carnes.

In addition to being outstanding performers, many of the MCMB members are successful conductors. Some of those conductors will be featured on individual compositions throughout the summer: Tracy Bermingham (June 12), Jacen Smith (June 26), Sarah DeRossi (July 10), Paul Wagner (July 24), and Julie Plant (August 7). The band will also recognize two just-retired members—Roger and Susan Smith—who played in the band for 69 and 57 years, respectively (June 26).

All of the concerts are free, and everyone is welcome. School band members and young children are especially encouraged to attend. Parking on Lake Shore Drive is prohibited. Parking is available in the lots closest to the amphitheater, as well as the Senior Center. Entrance to the park is free with a Michigan City Park sticker; otherwise, there is a parking fee of $4 for the band concert.

Jeffrey Scott Doebler is the conductor for the MCMB, and Quincy Ford is the assistant conductor. In 2018, Dr. Doebler was named a Distinguished Hoosier by Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb. Dr. Doebler serves as director of music education and bands at Valparaiso University. He is a past president of the Indiana Bandmasters Association and the Indiana Music Education Association. Mr. Ford, principal saxophone in the MCMB, is retired director of bands and music department chair from Michigan City High School.

Thursday, August 12, 2021 Concert

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The tenth and final concert of the 153rd season of the Michigan City Municipal Band (MCMB) will be held Thursday, August 12, 7:30p, at the Guy F. Foreman Bicentennial Amphitheater in Washington Park.

The August 12 concert repertoire will be:

Stitches in Time: A Second Piece by Meredith Brammeier
Old Town Road by Lil Nas X
The Belle of Chicago March by John Philip Sousa
Highlights from Frozen II by Kristen and Robert Lopez
Irish Tune from County Derry by Percy Grainger
Shepherd’s Hey by Percy Grainger
Too Young by Sidney Lippman and Sylvia Dee
Beau Monde by Jack Stamp
God Bless America by Irving Berlin
The Stars and Stripes Forever by John Philip Sousa

Stitches in Time: A Second Piece was the MCMB’s 2020 commission. Composer Meredith Brammeier created each movement as her interpretation of quilting patterns.

Old Town Road, by rapper Lil Nas X, was the winner of two Grammy Awards in 2020. At 19 weeks, the song holds the record of staying number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

John Philip Sousa composed The Belle of Chicago in 1892, and he dedicated it to the “Ladies of Chicago.” The march was finished just before he completed his 12-year tenure as conductor of the US Marine Band. He spent the next 40 years touring with his own professional band. Among the Sousa Band’s first successes was playing for the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, where the band was sometimes acclaimed as the “World’s Fair Band.”

Highlights from Frozen II, by Kristen and Robert Lopez, contains the following songs:

Vuelie, All is Found, Some Things Never Change, Into the Unknown, Lost in the Woods, and Show Yourself.

Born in Australia, Percy Grainger was known as an innovative composer, virtuoso pianist, and folk music researcher & arranger, as well as one of the first to use the phonograph in the collection of folk songs. The MCMB will play two of Mr. Grainger’s folk song settings. First is Irish Tune from County Derry, which we all recognize as Danny Boy. Second is a Morris dance called Shepherd’s Hey.

In 1952, Nat King Cole topped the Billboard charts for five weeks with Too Young, a song by Sidney Lippman and Sylvia Dee.

Beau Monde is the MCMB’s 2021 commission. It is an exciting and creative adaptation of the well-known hymn For the Beauty of the Earth. Dr. Jack Stamp, the composer, served for many years at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He is also the founder and conductor of a professional concert band called Keystone Winds. In retirement, Dr. Stamp is teaching at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls.

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The Star-Spangled Banner

The Star-Spangled Banner

Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

6-19-25 Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won

Stony the road we trod
Bitter the chastening rod
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died
Yet with a steady beat
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered
Out from the gloomy past
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast

God of our weary years
God of our silent tears
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way
Thou who has by Thy might Led us into the light
Keep us forever in the path, we pray
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee

Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee
Shadowed beneath Thy hand
May we forever stand
True to our God
True to our native land
Our native land

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