GREAT FALLS — The sound of brass and percussion drifts through Gibson Park as the Great Falls Municipal Band runs through its paces — preparing for a performance 133 years in the making.
(WATCH: 133 Years of Music: The Great Falls Municipal Band's legacy lives on)
"133 years of continual service and music that we've provided to the community of Great Falls. It's a rich legacy. We're one of the oldest continuous-running community bands in the United States of America," said Music Director Dusty Molyneaux.
The band's story begins in 1894, when it was founded as the Black Eagle Band by the Boston Montana Consolidated Copper and Silver Mining Co. — then the town's biggest employer. After the Anaconda Company purchased the smelter in 1910, the band became affiliated with the City of Great Falls and has been performing free summer concerts ever since.
Over 133 seasons, the Municipal Band has been part of some of the most significant moments in Great Falls and Montana history. The band played at the dedication of Fort Peck Dam in the late 1930s, an event attended by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It has also performed during visits by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, and has played at dedication ceremonies for dams on the Missouri River, the Warden Bridge, and both the old and new Great Falls airports.
In recent years, the organization has expanded to include the Community Band and the Community Jazz Band — groups with a similar mission of fostering musical arts in Great Falls.
Despite the band's long history, the preparation process remains the same every year. There are no weeks of rehearsals leading up to a performance. The band gets one shot.
"A community band will take several months to get ready for a performance. We get one shot," Molyneaux said.
That one rehearsal — held the day before each concert — is a tradition that principal trumpet player and personnel manager John Gemberling has been part of on and off for more than half a century. Gemberling first joined the band in ninth grade.
"Boy, I think that would have been 69," he said, when I asked what year he joined the band.
More than 50 years later, he is still showing up — alongside professional musicians, teachers, and retirees who give their time to keep the tradition alive.
"People are still volunteering for it and putting their best efforts behind it. And it's still a good thing," Gemberling said.
The band's annual Summer Celebration concert is held at Gibson Park on July 1 at 7 p.m. and is free and open to the public. The concert is held in conjunction with Paris Gibson Week and honors the winner of the Paris Gibson Award — a Great Falls civic tradition in which the recipient is recognized on stage and the band performs music connected to their passions and contributions to the community. Students from the Miss Linda School of Dance also perform as part of the evening.
The concert is part of a broader mission that has guided the Great Falls Municipal Band for 133 years — to foster an appreciation of musical arts in the community and provide a space where musicians of all backgrounds can come together to serve the people of Great Falls.
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