The audience enjoying one of our Sunday evening concerts in Crapo Park
Each year, the band has openings for a few musicians.  If you are interested in becoming a member of the Burlington Municipal Band, contact the band by email at bmbfoundation@muniband.org.
About the Band
The Burlington (Iowa) Municipal Band is a community concert band which has served and enriched the life of this city since 1927.  The band's first concert was presented in Crapo Park in May of that year after the citizens of Burlington had voted for the implementation of the Iowa Band Law, a statute that allows cities to levy a tax “for the maintenance and employment of a band for musical purposes.”  The city fathers of that time chose not to levy the tax as instructed by the vote, but to fund the band from the city's general fund instead.  The city discontinued that funding in 2011 and the band is now supported by private donations through the Burlington Municipal Band Foundation.  The band's roots extend back to the nineteenth century;  it was formed through the combining of the existing Orchard City Band and the privately operated Fischer's Band under the leadership of J. Henri Fischer, a prominent musician of the era.
The band today enjoys a membership from a wide variety of backgrounds. The band contains homemakers, physicians, music teachers, business men and women, ministers, retired people, college students, and a few outstanding high school musicians. All share the common enjoyment of playing their instruments and providing the community with a wholesome family activity.
The Municipal Band performs free Sunday evening concerts in Crapo Park during the summer months. These concerts are presented from 7:30 until 8:30 P.M. at the Crapo Park Bandshell, located on Grandview Drive within the park. This site provides concert goers a magnificent view of the Mississippi River and the Illinois farmlands spread below, and a wide lawn where listeners can choose to sit on park benches provided near the bandshell, or bring their own lawn chairs or blankets, perhaps to sit near the illuminated Foehlinger Fountain. The concerts are well attended by people of all ages, and many visitors to Burlington make it a point to return each summer to hear at least one concert.
This website is now maintained by members of the Burlington Municipal Band.
We thank the staff at the Burlington Public Library for the original site design.
City of Burlington Home Page | Quality of Life
This web site is also available in a LARGE PRINT version.
We hope that you will take the opportunity to support live music provided by many musical organizations in the Burlington Area.  Members of the Municipal Band participate in or direct many of these groups, and we would love to see you.  These groups include the school bands, orchestras and choirs in Burlington and surrounding communities as well as the Southeast Iowa Symphony, Southeast Iowa Band, Bel Canto Chorale, South Hill Brass, Southeast Iowa Brass Quintet, and the Southeast Iowa Woodwind Quintet. You may often find band members directing or participating in the pit bands of the Players Workshop and/or area school musical productions as well.
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Links to other web sites of interest
Enhancing the quality of life in Burlington and Southeast Iowa since 1927
(To hear a recording of our band, click play on your sound player -->)
(Hear a faster-loading midi file of The Stars and Stripes Forever -->)
As in the past, our concerts will be broadcast on KBUR AM 1490 via "immediate delay," from 9:00 until 10:00 P.M. on Sunday nights.
We invite you to preview each week's concert for interesting information about the music and the conductor by clicking on the "This week's concert" button below.  This information is normally available by the Wednesday preceding the concert.  For even more updates and information, visit our Facebook page.
The Burlington Municipal Band performs a free, one-hour concert at 7:30 PM on summer Sunday evenings, from June to early August.
Once again, we will be attempting to "live-stream" all of our concerts.  Our efforts to live-stream our 2023 concerts met with mixed results, but improved throughout the summer.  To view the concert live stream, click on the button below, or do an internet search for "Burlington Municipal Band live stream."  (This may need some tweaking as we continue to iron out any bugs.)
For 2022, we introduced two small but important changes.  In the past, our concerts at the band shell in Crapo Park occasionally had to be cancelled due to bad weather.  Now, in the event of bad or threatening weather, we will move our concert indoors to the James Madison School auditorium.  Due to the time necessary to move and set up our equipment, the decision on concert location will be made by 5:30 PM Sunday evening, and posted on this web site, the band's facebook page, and also announced on radio station KBUR.
Welcome to muniband.org, the official web site of the Burlington Municipal Band of Burlington, Iowa!
The Burlington Municipal Band is now a proud member of the SOUTHEAST IOWA ARTS COLLECTIVE!  Our corner of Iowa is blessed with many organizations which offer a plethora of events and activities associated with the performing and visual arts - we hope that you will check out and support them!
We want to express our thanks to the many people and organizations that make our concerts possible.  Thank you to Steve Hexom and KBUR for announcing and recording our concerts each week and Standard of Beaverdale for sponsoring those broadcasts for 16 years!  And huge thanks to Jennifer Hexom our band’s manager and Steve and Jennifer’s daughter April Carr who performs the band’s music library duties – their hard work behind the scenes is essential to the band’s success!

Great thanks to our hauling and loading crew including Pete Korb, Jack Hanks, Darin Otte, Emily Otte, Jonathan Chelf, Sophia To, and Chandler Carper, who load, transport, and set up our equipment each week.  Thanks to “Summer Snow” who provides the delicious shaved ice treats from her trailer each week!  And our very sweaty thanks to Ian Hanks for wearing the Muni Bear outfit each week all summer long!

Thank you to our newspapers, the Hawk Eye and the Beacon for carrying our concert information and to Elizabeth Pappas and Julie Nickell for their invaluable assistance in getting that coverage into print.  Thank you to the Burlington Municipal Band Foundation’s board members.  They work year around to promote the band and we appreciate it greatly!

Special thanks to Marcia Korb and Dawn and Pat Cazin and SG Construction Company for their work on our printed programs.  Marcia spends hours each week putting the programs together and Dawn proofreads them.  Pat Cazin prints them with the approval of his employer SG construction Company which underwrites that expense.  Dawn also posts excellent concert videos to Facebook.  And while I’m thanking Marcia Korb, that big white van you see carrying our equipment each week belongs to her.  She drives it, helps to load it and donates its costs to the band.  Thank you Marcia!

Thank you to Park Superintendent Ryan Gourley and the staff of Burlington’s Parks Department for maintaining the bandshell and for keeping this park such a beautiful place!  And thank you to the Burlington Community School District, Superintendent Rob Scott, and the board of education for allowing us to use the James Madison building for our rehearsals and meetings, and to Brent Krieger, the Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds, and his staff for facilitating that use.  We are very grateful!

Great thanks to Derrick Murphy for his work in setting up the sound system and the camera for live-streaming our concerts each week and for being the band’s go-to guy when things need to get done!  Thanks to Tom Bell (sometimes referred to as "the finest swordsman in all France") for being the band’s webmaster and for handling the traffic barricades at each concert and to Jim Priebe for serving as the band’s publicity person, contacting the media each week and writing the content of the press releases and the concert previews that appear on our website.  And thanks to Tri-States Public Radio WIUM-WIUW for listing and announcing our concerts on their community calendar.

Thank you to our band members for their hard work – they are great musicians and they put in untold hours of practice to make these concerts work with only one rehearsal!

Thank you to Jen Arnold for taking on the monumental job of President of the Muni Band Foundation – she is providing great leadership – and I always enjoy her clever Facebook posts!  

We need to recognize our concert underwriters, Edward and Lisa Ortcigar, Marc and Monica Wagenbach, Two Rivers Bank and Trust, the MaryAnn Kreckel Memorial, The Des Moines County Community Foundation, the City of Burlington, and an anonymous donor for their wonderful support!  And thanks to all who have supported the band – they are too numerous to mention individually but their names are in your programs and I hope you will thank them when you have the opportunity.  And finally, thanks to you, our audience for coming to our concerts.  Without you there would be no point!  We’ve had a wonderful summer and we will look forward to seeing you here at the band shell next year.