City's Municipal Band Continues 67th Summer Season with Sunday Evening Performances Through July 15

Article by: Melinda Eddleman

For music lovers of all ages, the Corpus Christi Municipal Band will host another series of free summer concerts to delight audiences with a variety of tunes ranging from marches and pops to light classical music and show melodies. This year’s Sunday evening concerts mark the band’s 67th consecutive summer performance season.

Due to a current capital improvement project on Del Mar College’s East Campus, the Municipal Band will continue to perform their concerts indoors in the Retama Room on the second floor of the Harvin Student Center on that same campus at Ayers and Kosar.

Concerts are Sunday evenings now through July 15 and begin at 8:30 p.m. Performances will feature a variety of conductors during the summer season.

For more information, contact retired DMC professor of music David Irving, who taught stage band and guitar and now serves as the current business manager for the Municipal Band, at dirving@delmar.edu.

In addition to providing the venue for performances, DMC supports the Municipal Band by providing rehearsal space, equipment and logistical support. The Municipal Band moved performances to the College’s East Campus in 2014. In previous seasons, the band performed at Cole Park and Heritage Park.

When the Municipal Band played its first concert in 1952, all the band’s musicians were members of the local chapter of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM). The AFM funded the concerts with its Music Performance Trust Fund established by the national AFM and the recording industry as a hedge against the threat of recorded music taking away live musicians’ livelihoods. Union membership thrived in the 1940s and 1950s with more than 400 members in the Corpus Christi chapter alone.

Today, most musicians are volunteers. The band accepted volunteer musicians into the group beginning in the mid-1950s.