Arts & Entertainment
VIDEO: Woburn City Band Marks its 75th Year of Performing
Kris Asgeirsson leads the band; for him family makes musical harmony.
“From the top.”
The toe-tapping sound of a march, the “Col. Bogey,” filled the room. Then “Anchors Away,” “The US Air Force” and the Marine’s Hymn”—followed by a Michael Jackson medley.
A band of musicians gathered Tuesday evening at the to rehearse for an upcoming performance.
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About 20 of them will play and march in the city’s a week from today.
A diverse group, they are all members of the Woburn City Band.
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The band is celebrating its 75th anniversary year this year. The organization is one of the oldest continuously performing bands in New England, according to its drummer and director, Kris Asgeirsson.
“What you have here,” Asgeirsson said after the rehearsal, “is a collection of musicians (professionals and amateurs)."
By day, some of those musicians are engineers. Some are teachers. Asgeirsson teaches social studies in Reading at the . He also teaches music privately. Some band members are students themselves.
Band members range in age from teens to 70 and 80-year-olds. The elders will march and play in the parade alongside their younger counterparts, Asgeirsson noted.
Asgeirsson has been affiliated with the band for 41 years, since he was 10. He has conducted the band for about eight years.
“I’ve been playing music all my life,” Asgeirsson said.
He’s been playing professionally “for a long time.”
“The whole idea here,” Asgeirsson said, is, “it’s fun.” You’re also playing with good players.
“You can sit and play,” his wife, Cherie, a flutist in the band, interjected, “and enjoy the music.”
One of their first dates was a band rehearsal, she recalled.
“I was 14,” she said. “He was 16.”
Music is a family affair for the Asgeirssons. Kris’ father, Jon, conducted the band before him, for some 30 years.
Both of his sisters, Karen and Nina, played trumpet in the band. In that era, Karen was the first woman to play in three bands, he noted.
The Asgeirsson’s daughter, Greta, is a harpist, who just finished her sophomore year at Boston University.
Their son, Jon, who is finishing his freshman year at , plays trumpet in the band. Asked how he became acquainted with the organization, Jon simply pointed to his father.
Besides the band, many of these musicians play in venues ranging, Asgeirsson said, from local halls to Carnegie Hall.
Asgeirsson and wife have played at Carnegie Hall.
“It all comes down to a phone call,” Asgeirsson said. Someone will need someone to play drums, or flute. It’s a bigger deal the younger you are, he said. When he was in high school he played with a group of his peers at Symphony Hall.
“I went, ‘Wow. My teacher plays here,’” he recalled.
Not that he gets blasé. Asgeirsson said he played a gig with Aretha Franklin. One day, while he was in his car, one of her songs played on the radio. He smiled, he said, and thought, “I’ve done that (song) with her.”
His wife and daughter toured with Barry Manilow. Manilow needed a harpist, Asgeirsson explained, and a flutist.
As for the city band, the group plays marches, patriotic songs and light classical pieces, said French horn player David Benedetto, “like the (Boston) Pops.”
This is part of America’s musical heritage, said Benedetto, who teaches chemistry at . A member of the band for about two years, he’s played piano since he was 7, French horn since eighth grade.
The band is “a great way to just get back into music,” said trumpeter Peter Pongratz, of Winchester. He earned an undergraduate degree in music education, with a major in trumpet.
“This gets the chops going again,” he said.
Playing with the band is “my outlet,” according to Bonnie Littlejohn, who plays baritone horn. She started to play trumpet in third grade. Sophomore year in high school, she switched, she said, to baritone horn. She also played baritone horn in college, she said. Littlejohn graduated from Boston College in 1993. After a six-year hiatus, the Malden resident and math tutor joined this band.
Band members come from Acton to Boston. Right now, no band musician hails from Woburn.
The band started to rehearse in 1935, according to Asgeirsson. Members played their first concert in 1936. Edson Kimball founded the group and was its first conductor, Asgeirsson said, for almost 40 years, until 1973. Asgeirsson first played with the band under Kimball’s baton.
The band will play for two Woburn parades, Memorial Day and Veterans Day, and a special concert, “because it’s our anniversary,” Asgeirsson said. That concert has not yet been scheduled, he said.
Playing in a parade is different than a stationary venue, according to Asgeirsson.
“The audience changes every few seconds,” he said.
Some marching bands simply repeat the same music along the parade route.
Not this band. They're ready to play about two dozen pieces, Asgeirsson said.
