TEENS STAND BESIDE VETERANS IN MUNY BAND

Several people turned out to enjoy the Cape Municipal Band Wednesday including, front row, from left, Tara Craven, Chelsea Walker and Hannah Walker. Back row, Rodney and Dimple Bridges, and Dave and Julie Walker.

Cape Girardeau Municipal Band director Ron Nall conducted several songs made popular by Frank Sinatra during Wenesday night's performance at Capaha Park. Nall has been directing the band for four years.

Craig Marshal plays the kettle drums for Cape Girardeau's Municipal Band.

Tim Cannon, of Chaffee, is one of three tuba players with the band. Cannon has played in the Cape Girardeau Municipal Band for three years.

Shannon Randol dreams of traveling the world playing guitar in an alternative rock band, but on Wednesday evenings this summer, the 17-year-old plays Sousa, Gershwin and Von Suppe on his trumpet as a member of the Cape Girardeau Municipal Band.

Why?

"Sometimes I don't like listening to the concert band or classical music, but I like to play it," Randol said.

Besides, he says, playing trumpet helps him with his hand speed on the guitar.

He's among the half a dozen teenagers mixed in the 55-member municipal band, a band known for the longevity of its members. At least four current members have played with the municipal band at least 50 years. Still Randol feels like he fits in.

Municipal band director Ron Nall is also band director at Cape Central High School. Every year Nall picks a few of his students to sit in with the band. Enough of them like the experience that Nall estimates that nearly half of the band members are his former students.

He's not the first to do so. Current trombonist Dan Cotner first started in the band in 1941 when his high school band director at Cape Central, William Shivelbine, selected him for the band. Shivelbine was band director at the high school as well.

Nall picks students he expects will be involved in music after they graduate high school.

"Most of the kids don't play during the summer," he said. "For the few who do, just the fact that they're playing is good for their lips and their endurance."

He doesn't usually make them first chairs, but that doesn't mean any mistakes the new players make will go unnoticed. Band arrangements don't call for much unison playing. Each trumpet plays a different part, but the first chair carries most of the melody. So a first-chair player in high school will have to play background most of the summer.

However, the only baritone saxophone player in the municipal band this summer is an 18-year-old, Tracie Ramage. Ramage just graduated from Cape Central is headed to Truman State University where she's signed up to play in the concert band.

Like Randol, Ramage is not playing her first choice instrument -- she prefers tenor sax -- but unlike Randol, she's an enthusiast of much of the music the band plays.

"I like swing," she said. "And show music."

She doesn't plan to be a professional musician. "Maybe as a moonlighting kind of thing," she said.

Ramage finds playing in the municipal band a far different experience than playing in the school band.

"Everyone knows what they're doing," she said. "They can just sight read it. In high school, you spend weeks practicing for one concert."

In the muny band, the group rehearses on Monday for an hour and a half, then plays the concert Wednesday. That's it.

Some of the band veterans have played the songs many times, Ramage said. "I go in there and try to learn them in an hour and a half and make all kinds of mistakes, and they're very helpful."

Amy Arnold, 17, just finished her junior year at Scott City High School and plays clarinet in the municipal band. She likes the challenge of sight reading.

Unlike high school where she spends weeks on a piece, Arnold said, "You don't get bored with the music."

Most of all she likes being around the more mature musicians. "They play the music," Arnold said. "They don't just play the notes. There's a feeling you can get with music. Most high school groups don't get the feeling."

Randol prefers playing in the municipal band the high school band.

He said many students who play in the high school band "just want to be there for the easy grade. In muny, everyone wants to be there."