HUNTINGTON BEACH In 1977 the members of the Huntington Beach Concert Band voted in favor of a young high school music teacher looking for a part-time gig to lead them. And Tom Ridley hasn…
HUNTINGTON BEACH In 1977 the members of the Huntington Beach Concert Band voted in favor of a young high school music teacher looking for a part-time gig to lead them. And Tom Ridley hasn’ t looked back.
Back then, although Ridley had played clarinet in the 72nd U. S. Army Band, he had never thought of conducting a band.
But he needed the money.
“I had a kid, a house and a wife, ” he said. “It seemed a good way to make money.”
This one, which paid about $3,000 annually seemed pretty good. Particularly in 1977 dollars.
A year later, voters passed Proposition 13 and funding for the band from the city soon dried up.
“But by then I was hooked, ” said Ridley, who became a dues-paying volunteer conductor.
This year, Ridley, 71, took the baton to start his 41st season with the local ensemble. And while he now receives a modest honorarium for his efforts, it remains largely a labor of love.
The band plays host to the free 11-week Huntington Beach Concert Band Summer Concert Series at the newly dubbed Thomas Ridley bandstand in Central Park behind the Central Library.
The local group kicks off and ends the series each year. Other featured groups range from concert bands to Latin bands to swing bands. The HB Concert Band will also play Sunday, July 23, when it presents music from movies.
Lloyd Glick, 93, the last remaining original member of the band from its founding in 1973, remembers that when Ridley auditioned for the job, he immediately was the top choice.
“I’ d say there was instant recognition of his ability, ” Glick said. “Just his manner and his professionalism.”
When Ridley was hired the Concert Band was near its nadir. John Mason, a music teacher at Marina High who founded the band, left and took with him the high school students that made up the bulk of the band.
“It looked like the band would fold, ” said Glick, the manager of the band at the time. “When John Mason left were down to 16 members.”
Glick said the band may not have survived if Ridley, “was anything less than what he was.”
Although the turnaround wasn’ t instantaneous, under Ridley’s steady, quiet hand, the Huntington Beach Concert Band has not only survived, but thrived.
In the 70s, Ridley said the band would often perform in front of 50 people.
“We’ d sit under eucalyptus trees with acorns falling in the tuba, ” Ridley said.
Nowadays between 1,500 and 2,000 residents typically come out to performances.
In addition to performing about a dozen concerts per year with the band, Ridley has been attending weekly Tuesday rehearsals for 40 years.
In 2011, Ridley took over as leader of the Covina Concert Band, which has taken up his Monday nights with rehearsals and also plays about a dozen dates.
This year, for the first time, Ridley also became a member of the board of directors of the national Association of Concert Bands.
Although he says he may reconsider his commitment to the bands in another five years, Ridley shows no signs of letting off the gas.
“It keeps us seniors off the streets, ” Ridley says jokingly of the busy music schedules of the bands.
With the Association of Concert Bands, Ridley works as Regional Membership Coordinator and is part of a slow rebirth of community music.
“In the “hey day” of American concert bands, 1880-1950, the days of Gilmore, Sousa and Fillmore, there were several thousand community bands across the U. S., ” said Delbert Eisch, a historian and past president of the Association of Concert Bands
“After television reached its peak in the 1980’s as America’s preferred form of entertainment, community bands again regained some of its popularity, ” he said. “The Association of Concert Bands, founded in 1979, has shown a steady growth in community bands. Today our organization lists a membership more than 300 community bands and growing.”
After teaching at several schools, Ridley went into sales and eventually became an independent businessman selling printing and promotional products until 2008.
He said his customers knew “If you had Tom do it, it was done right.”
And that same ethic has translated into his running of the band, he says.
Although the majority of the band members are in their 50s and 60s, younger members are continually joining.
Most played in high school and some in college and professionally, but according to Ridley many had slipped away.
The Concert Band then becomes a way for many to rediscover the love and fun of music.
And there’s this.
“It’s the best therapy you can get, ” Ridley said of playing and practicing. “You’ re among friends and it’s a whole lot of fun.
Although all the band members and board are volunteers and the city allows it to use its outdoor space, Ridley still says it costs about $20,000 in operations costs for insurance, workers to set up and tear down sites and to add sheet music every year to the band’s library.
However, if you go to a Huntington Beach Concert Band concert, you’ re sure to get a nice diet of show tunes and movie music, and a dose of marches and, always, patriotic music. They are Huntington Beach, after all.
This year, to celebrate Ridley’s 40-plus years with the band there will be a gala tribute concert in October in his honor. It is entitled “Of God and country.”
As Ridley explains, “My wife, Janet, said ‘That sums you up.’”
