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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels August 4, 2004 A musical escape By Jennifer Squires Ashland Daily Tidings People can live in Ashland for years without understanding why a surge of cars and buses enters Lithia Park on Thursday evenings in the summer. From 200 yards away, the marches the 70-piece Ashland City Band performs are barely audible. One has to walk even closer to see the 200-plus crowd patterned out across the hillside on blankets, in lawn chairs and on the wooden benches. Bill Reaves and Becca Ostrom of Ashland do some light reading and a crossword while listening to the City Band in Lithia Park. Photos by Andrew Mariman | Ashland Daily Tidings But once people find the city band crowded inside the band shell, it's a summer love that never ends. Ginny Pryne understands. So does Jack Morrison. Pryne, a resident at Mountain Meadows in Ashland, has frequented the city band concerts on and off since she moved to the area 30 years ago. "To me, it's just charming," Pryne said. "It's just really fun. I just love sitting high enough up on the hill to watch all the little kids dance down by the stage." Morrison, a music major who graduated from Southern Oregon University in June, is in the middle of his first season with the band. "I do it because I love the music and also, as a percussionist, the instruments are very expensive," said Morrison, who plays the tympani or kettle drums. A long tradition The shows, which are free to the public, have been held for decades in Ashland. The band itself can trace its roots back to small town bands that performed in Ashland just before the turn of the 20th century. "It's a unique situation for a town the size of Ashland to be able to support a quality band," said seventh-year band director Don Bieghler, who first joined the band in 1963. "We have some of the best of the best in the Rogue Valley. I think it would be hard to find a comparable group as talented on the West Coast." Positions in the band are coveted and, sometimes, don't become available for years. To join, musicians must pass an audition and be able to sight-read because the players are only given 24 hours to learn the weekly program. "The music really is not very difficult," Morrison said. The group plays band music that typically rates three or four on a 1-5 difficulty scale. "But we have a two-hour practice on Wednesday to learn the songs, play on Thursday, then never see them again." The band plays fresh programs each week, mixing marches and show tunes together, though the group always opens with the slide whistle and "Strike up the Band" and ends with a march by Souza. "We get all ages from young children to people living in retirement homes," Bieghler said. "We try to provide a program that will be of interest to all of those folks." Highlight of the week As the first chords of a Souza march fill the air, the some of spectators sprinkled across the lawn with picnic dinners and board games start folding their lawn chairs and blankets. The buses and vans from several retirement homes pull closer to the venue to pick up residents. But a large portion of the crowd doesn't turn from the band shell. Instead, they stand and clap, sometimes offbeat, to the closing act. "It's so much fun and that focuses on local people," Pryne said. "It just tickles me to see all that going on." Adele Shimanoff, another Mountain Meadow resident, agreed. "I just like to go," said Shimanoff, who has been attending shows since she came to Ashland four years ago. "Can you think of any nicer way to spend an evening than out in the park looking at the sky and the trees? It's a great way to spend the evening." The Ashland City Band season concludes Thursday, though all of the shows are aired on RVTV at 10 a.m. the following Sunday. DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Click Here Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams