Happy 125th to the St. Cloud Municipal Band

It may not be the country’s oldest continuously active community band – that honor apparently goes to the Allentown (Pa.) Band, which had its first documented performance in 1828 – but at 125 years old, the St. Cloud Municipal Band is certainly one of the old-timers among U.S. community bands.  The SCMB kicked off its 125th anniversary season last month with a concert at the Paramount Theatre; on Saturday afternoon it will play a concert in Barden Park as part of the celebration honoring the Lewis family’s connections to St. Cloud.



Last month’s concert drew an audience of 550 people, and the radio station WJON ran a story about it, which you can read here. The story includes five photos of the band from over the years, and three of them may look familiar to regular readers of my blog – they are of the band during the time my great-grandfather, G. Oliver Riggs, was director.

The band’s official beginning is dated at 1887, when the city’s first daily newspaper began reporting on the activities of a community band called the St. Cloud Union Band. An auxiliary of this band, the St. Cloud Bicycle Band, famously performed at the Minnesota State Fair in 1895 and claimed to be the only such band of its kind. The 16 or so musicians played while riding bicycles and were led by a man named John Boobar, a percussion player and professional bicycle rider. Another band member was Martin Molitor, who years later served on the band committee that brought G. Oliver to St. Cloud in 1923 to resurrect the city band, which had broken up after World War I.

Martin Molitor, left, and John Boobar of the St. Cloud Bicycle Band.

Molitor also was partly responsible for G. Oliver leaving St. Cloud in 1925; he and G. Oliver tangled over who was getting credit for the band’s success, which led to G. Oliver resigning as band director (he returned in 1928, after the city elected a new mayor and passed the band tax law). But that’s a story for another blog entry!

Because of that gap in time, between the end of World War I and G. Oliver’s arrival in 1923, the St. Cloud Municipal Band cannot claim to be Minnesota’s oldest continuous community band – but it wouldn’t be able to claim that, anyway, since the honor goes to the Meire Grove Band, which was established in 1883, followed by the Carlisle Band, which formed in 1894. Meire Grove is located halfway between St. Cloud and my hometown of Alexandria, and Carlisle is just north of Fergus Falls (something about the soil or air in west central Minnesota must have fostered musical activity).

Members of the Meire Grove Band, circa 1894 (photo from the Meire Grove Band website)

The third band in the running for the honor is the Two Harbors City Band in northeastern Minnesota; it formed in 1897 and still performs weekly summer concerts.

The Two Harbors City Band (photo from the Friends of the Band Shell Park website)

Thinking about the history of Minnesota’s community bands got me curious about longtime, continuous community bands in other states, so I did some further research.  Here’s what I found:

• The Allentown Band, which I mentioned earlier, has been going strong since 1828. John Philip Sousa recruited members of the band for his own professional band, and the band was directed for many years by a Sousa alumnus, Albertus L. Meyers. The band has about 65 members, ranging in age from teenagers to senior citizens, and it plays 50 paid engagements each year.

The Allentown Band from the 1800s (photo from the Allentown Band website)

• The Bangor (Maine) Band, which bills itself as the oldest continuous community band in New England, dates back to 1859. During the Civil War, the band became a regimental band attached to the Second Maine Infantry and later the Fourteenth Maine Regiment, and was present in February 1865 when Union forces recaptured Fort Sumter from the Confederacy. The band is made up of about 50 musicians and performs throughout the year.

The Bangor Band, 1898 (photo from the Bangor Band website)

• The Medina (Ohio) Community Band has been through several incarnations since it formed in 1859. The original band was made up of males, mostly in their 20s. The current band is composed of about 100 musicians, male and female, who range in age from 15 to upper-80s. In the summer, the band performs in a gazebo in the town’s historic Uptown Park Square.

The Medina Knights of Pythias Band, 1901 (photo from the Medina Community Band website)

• The Maine (N.Y.) Community Band, formed in 1861. Like the others I’ve mentioned, it initially was an all-male band, with an emphasis on brass instruments, but is now truly a community band made up of males and females from youth to retirees.

The Maine Community Band from 1907 (photo from the Maine Community Band website)

I’m sure there are other longtime, continuously active bands out there that I’m missing; if you know of one worth mentioning, let me know!

It’s encouraging to see that St. Cloud isn’t the only city that continues to value and support its community band. According to the article Celebrating 150 Years of Minnesota Community Bands by Jon Schroeder, the construction in recent years of new outdoor summer concert venues (like the state-of-the-art bandshell in Red Wing) shows that interest in Minnesota’s community bands – thought to number 150 – is on the upswing.

That’s a trend I can enthusiastically support. Happy Anniversary, St. Cloud Municipal Band. May you and your community enjoy many, many more!