Eighty-six-year-old Martin Picard has been a drummer in the Orange Community Band band since his son joined to play trumpet 30 years ago. He started playing the drums as a kid and stuck with it.
“I’m still pretty lousy,” he said jokingly, while packing up his kit after a recemt rehearsal.
On select Wednesdays, you can find Picard and the rest of the band rehearsing the Orange Armory. Walk through the doors to the building and you can hear the sounds of a group that transcends age and focuses on a feeling of family.
Adjacent to the room where the more than 160-year-old band plays is Orange Senior Center, where Director Tracy Gaudet educates the town’s elderly on the growing epidemic of people dreaming up new ways to swindle seniors out of their money.
The Orange Community Band has had various names since its formation in the 1850s, but it remains a safe space for musicians, young and old, to serenade locals with concerts brimming with well-known music. The band currently has between 30 and 40 members. It restarted rehearsals last month in preparation for its summer season.
The band’s next concert will be Friday, July 14, on the bandstand in Butterfield Park. The Friday night concert is part of the band’s regular Friday summer series.
Stephanie Parker, who has been the band’s conductor for 13 years, spent a couple of hours on a June evening whipping back into musical shape roughly 25 members of her band for a show a couple of weeks later.
Three rows of musicians with easels in front of them practiced the haunting flagship song from “The Phantom of the Opera.”
“No, no – they’re half-notes,” she says, correcting them. “Da-da-da-da-da-da.”
The rehearsing musicians’ wardrobes don’t exactly resemble that of the Boston Pops Orchestra. The people in the Orange Community Band don T-shirts, polos and baseball caps. Most of the feet tapping to keep the rhythm are sporting flip flops and sandals. Though, the music played becomes stronger, more triumphant and more in unison the more the band plays it.
Francine Rajaniemi, an 18-year-old flutist, said the vast range of ages in the band provides excellent learning opportunities.
“Honestly, it’s amazing getting to play with people with so much experience, just because they can sight read something it takes me weeks to learn,” she said. “Their level of experience and talent is amazing. Just their ability to play the music is incredible.”
Rajaniemi has been playing the flute for nine years and joined the Orange Community Band when her friend, fellow flutist Zachary Surette, invited her to a rehearsal three years ago.
“I love how complicated the music is. It always keeps me on my toes,” she said, adding that Broadway music is her favorite and the band rehearses two to three of those pieces a week.
Parker joined the band 27 years ago, when she was a 10-year-old trumpeter. The band is a bit of a family affair, as her father, Terry Parker, plays tuba and her brother, also named Terry, sometimes plays trumpet. She also said her 11-year-old daughter, Ava Doody, will start playing during rehearsals, though she still enjoys sitting in the audience with friends during performances.
“I don’t work as a musician professionally, but I went to school for music, so it’s a good way for me to be musical,” Parker said. “It’s a wholesome family activity that’s safe and and free. It’s really special to me. It’s music, it’s community, it’s family.”
Parker said her band consists of doctors, lawyers, teachers and various other professions, including retirees. The band’s repertoire includes patriotic tunes, classical music and jazzy numbers, something for nearly every demographic.
“We like to play music. We work hard. We like to challenge ourselves,” Parker said, “but the real big idea is to just play music, have fun – and it keeps the traditions going.”
That sentiment was exemplified when Harry Sharbaugh approached Parker after June 14’s rehearsal.
“That was a fun evening,” he said.
Clarinetist Maureen Riendeau, 68, remembers visiting her grandparents’ house across the street from the bandstand and sitting on their steps to listen to the concerts, where popcorn and slush were served.
“It was a whole community thing,” she said. “There was a lot of activity down there on Friday nights.”
She joined the band in the third grade, more than 50 years ago.
“It was a chance to play the clarinet in the summertime,” she said. “It’s a group thing. You get together and you make music – when you’re alone it’s not exactly the same.”
Riendeau recalls when the band was called The Minute Tapioca Band, when it was sponsored by the Minute Tapioca factory that operated out of 131 West Main St. until 1967. The band kept its name until roughly 1970, when the company asked its members to change it.
Riendeau said several band members have “sort of pledged to each other” to keep the music joining as long as they can keep recruiting new musicians. She also said there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work that people don’t see, such as handling the sheet music, installing light bulbs for a performance or setting up the concession stand.
The remainder of the summer schedule is: Friday, sponsored by Quitters Win tobacco cessation services and the Blackmer Family; July 21, in memory of Nursie Perkins, Freeland, Tom and John; and July 28, Memory Night, sponsored by Witty’s Funeral Home.