The Kings Park Band To Perform At Mason District Park Tonight

Missed the The Kings Park Band during their July 3 performance at for the Spotlight by Starlight summer concert series? You're in luck. The band will play at the Northern Virginia Training Center in Fairfax tonight, July 12

The Kings Park Band was formed in 1965 with nine people and has grown to a full concert band with over 55 adults and a professional conductor. The band members carry on the American community band tradition through free public concerts and typical band music including light classics, marches and popular compositions.

Kings Park Band president Bill Stetson said the band has played at Mason District Park many times in the past, "even on a steaming night in the nineties last summer!

Annandale Patch spoke with the band before their Annandale performance. Learn more about them in our Q&A with Stetson, who also plays trumpet in the band.

Kings Park is known for preserving the big band tradition. How has the band’s sound changed over time?

I don’t know as the sound has changed too much—other than that we’ve tried to make it better! Conductor Rich Bergman spent many years producing award-winning bands at Herndon High School. And he has definitely raised our level of playing in the half dozen years he has been leading us. 

Do you think the band has a sound that any music lover can enjoy or is it more of an acquired taste?

I would recommend the concert to all people who like to listen to a good community band play a variety of marches, show tunes and light classical music.

What do you love most about playing in the Kings Park Band?

I love music. And I enjoy the challenge of making good music with people from a wide variety of backgrounds and occupations—brought together by their love of music.

What songs will the band play tonight?*

Our conductor, Rich Bergman, has chosen a variety of pieces. We’ll open with a different sort of march by Haydn Wood, which celebrates the Montmartre area of Paris. Of course, we’ll also play the more usual marches by John Philip Sousa and others. Two pieces have Vienna in the title: Franz von Suppe’s “Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna” and “Vienna Carousel Waltz,” by our own composer-in-residence, Don Hertig. We’ll play an exciting piece by the American composer Alfred Reed called “El Camino Real,” and our French horn section will be featured on Malinda Zenor’s swing-style “Vive la Horn!” Among other things, we also look forward to playing an arrangement of songs from the musical “Fiddler on the Roof.”

*Editor's note: Stetson's answer was in response to the setlist planned for their Mason District Park performance on July 3. The setlist performed by the band tonight in Fairfax may vary.