The Laguna Community Concert Band has earned the right to toot its own horn.
Sunday’s 10th anniversary concert was a joyous triumph that few would have imagined when the idea was first conceived over a cup of coffee at Zinc Café by founders Bill Nicholls, Teresa Marino and Carol Reynolds, then an arts commissioner.
“Bill asked me today if I ever dreamed 10 years ago we’d have a band like this,” Reynolds said.
“No way,” said Reynolds, usually the optimum optimist.
In the beginning the band had to beg to be heard. Many in the audience at the early concerts were there because of their friendship with the original band members: local conductor Ed Peterson, musicians Dennis White, Ken Hanson, Sheryl Caverly, Niko Theris, and the three founders.
“She owed me,” said Reynolds’ friend, Cindy Prewitt, who promotes of the Laguna Beach Live! concerts and knows her music.
Arts Commissioner Pat Kollenda, a champion of the performing arts, advised Reynolds never to let the band attempt again to play certain pieces of music.
This reporter remembers wincing when they played “The Star Spangled Banner.” Sunday, I got chills.
The 10th Anniversary Concert at the Artists Theatre on the Laguna Beach High School campus was played to a standing-room-only audience — Arno and Arts Commissioner Suzi Chauvel, Prewitt, Leslie Power and others hunkered down on the stairs.
Lona Ingwerson served as mistress of ceremonies and added little tidbits not in the program about the musical directors, soloists and the program.
Among the tidbits: Pete Fournier, the most recent director to add his talents to the band, earned his master’s degree in music at USC, where he was once the drum major of the USC marching band, the guy that plunges his sword into the 50-yard line at football games. Petersen reached the top of Mt. Whitney twice as an Eagle Scout.
Guest conductor Mayor Kelly Boyd needed little introduction from the circumspect Ingwerson.
“I might need a CUP someday,” she said.
Boyd conducted the band in “God Bless America, while his wife, Michelle, snapped photographs.
Lisa Morrice, whose vocals ranged from opera to swing, was stunning in a red dress — originally worn by her mother Bev Hind, also a singer.
“It’s about 50 years old,” Hind said.
