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.
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.
