Allentown Band

A prominent feature of nineteenth-century musical Americana is the concert band, and the Allentown Band has, for almost two hundred years, kept that tradition alive. Drawn from within a fifty-mile radius of the Lehigh Valley, the band’s musicians, as different as their backgrounds may be, share one common goal: to create and preserve concert band music at a level of excellence rarely heard from a community band.

All members of the Allentown Band approach their music-making in a professional manner, though none makes his or her living from music performance alone. Many, however, are teachers of music—in schools and in private studios. Some teach a variety of subjects unrelated to music. Others are engaged in engineering, accounting, sales, insurance, medicine and dentistry, or in various office work or building trades. When they meet to perform, however—whether in a public park setting, retirement community, or in Carnegie Hall—both age and daytime vocation disappear. All effort is concentrated toward creating the most enjoyable sounds these exceptional musicians can produce—whether it be an overture transcribed from opera, a modern composition written especially for concert band, or a Sousa march.

A typical Allentown Band schedule includes roughly forty yearly performances. The venue fluctuates—from concert stage to baseball park, from church picnic to university commencement, from Allentown’s Symphony Hall to New York’s Carnegie Hall. In addition to providing annual free concerts for the greater Lehigh Valley’s younger school children, the schedule includes a yearly event called the “Side-by-Side Concert,” where talented secondary-school student musicians are invited to sit “side-by-side” in a joint performance with the Allentown Band.