Brass Band megathread

[John Morgan]

John:
Happy to answer your question about the Ophir Prison Band. First of all, its apocryphal. There actually is a small town in Northern California called Ophir, but no prison there. The band was formed 50 years ago by some miss-behaving music majors at Sacramento State. They came up with the idea of having a faux prison band made up of "inmates" out on furlough (wearing fake ankle monitors) who would march, play difficult but catchy repertoire, and bring a certain amount of the thespian arts into the equation. The conductor, Rufus Whizbang (not his real name) sports a British-style jungle hat with a propeller on top, a fake glasses big nose mustache "disguise" and conducts the band in a long-tails polka dot coat and uses a toilet plunger as his conducting baton. All of the "prisoners" wear cambray shirts with their prison nickname stenciled on back (mine is IQ LMTD), raggedy cutoff jeans, and we attend parades (such as second Saturday open city art venues in Sacramento) and other places playing as we march and usually stopping off in a park near the end of the parade route to offer a full concert. Check out the Web site at ophirprison.com. The quality of the players is high; many were or are band directors; being a member of several community bands, I'd say their overall musical ability tops any other band I've been in, and then there's the slapstick theatre of it all. Check them out on youtube and you'll see what I mean. I just attended rehearsal last night (once a month 3 hour rehearsals) and we're prepping for a second Saturday performance in October and a Mardi Gras celebration in March. We do some complex marching maneuvers during our parades which are not for the faint of heart. It's all great fun but at the same time is a very serious undertaking.

I must have missed reading your response, but a late thanks for telling more about the Ophir Prison Band. Now that sounds fun, and I completely missed the fact that it really isn't a real prison!

[Knightstar81]

Here's a writeup about my brass band from a few weeks back. We just had our first concert of the season on Sunday.

https://riverartsalliance.org/2023/1...season-begins/