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          In his 1928 autobiography Marching Along: Recollections of Men, Women and Music legendary band master and March King John Philip Sousa wrote:  “Strange is the boy who doesn’t love a band.”  Not quite thirty years later one chilly October afternoon in Defiance, Ohio, a couple took their four-year-old son to see a Halloween parade.  The band marching in that parade so upset the youngster that he ran away.  That boy was Steve Layman, and fortunately for hundreds, if not thousands, of high school and… Read More

          When Sol Kaufman and Ed Joachim began planning for a town band for Charlottesville in the spring of 1922, they faced many challenges and questions.  High among those questions doubtless was that of where would the band make its home?  What kind of facility was needed?  Did such a space already exist in Charlottesville or would one need to be built?  Once Harry Lowe was hired as Music Director for the band, he assuredly also added to and refined Sol and Ed’s thinking as… Read More

It was a Saturday afternoon in 1941.  A young boy sat on the floor in front of his family’s console radio.  The United States Marine Band was presenting a concert from Washington, DC, and the youngster was impressed and intrigued by an outstanding solo played by one of the Band’s fine clarinetists.  After the piece concluded, the boy told his parents confidently “That’s the instrument I want to play some day!”That boy was Jimmy Simmons, and in just a few more years he would fulfill… Read More

Music Director Marlin Brown left Charlottesville and the Municipal Band for California in March 1957 after conducting the Band for six and a half years.  Once again the Band’s Board of Directors was tasked with finding a new Conductor for the Band—and once again they didn’t have to look far to find just the man for the job.  Early in March 1957 they appointed euphonium player Sharon Hoose as the Band’s fifth Music Director.  He would serve in that capacity until February 1980 and would… Read More