The Capitol City Band will play spirited music to celebrate Juneteenth and what it means to Americans as it opens its concert season Thursday, June 19, 7 p.m. at Rennebohm Park in Madison.
For more than five decades, the Capitol City Band has played free concerts each summer on Madison’s West Side on Thursday nights during the summer.
Since 1981, Jim Latimer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison emeritus music professor, has been leading the Capitol City Band and conducting hundreds and hundreds of concerts. Ronald Reagan had just become president when Latimer first started conducting the band. “Is that right?” Latimer laughs. “I hadn’t thought of it in that context. But it has been a labor of love over these many years and I am so happy and proud to be involved with it.”
Thursday’s Juneteenth concert will be the beginning of 10 straight weekly performances of the Capitol City Band at Rennebohm Park. Latimer says it is exciting that Juneteenth falls on a Thursday this year and the band can celebrate with music.
“It is amazing how Juneteenth has caught on over the years and now it has a life of its own,” Latimer tells Madison365.
Latimer says he is excited to “pass the conducting baton to the next generation” to Dave Pedracine, Latimer’s longtime protégé, who has been associate conductor of the band since the 1980s and has just completed his first season as conductor of the now 75-year-old volunteer VFW Band, the Capitol City Band’s sister organization that plays September through May.
“David Pedracine has been wonderful and he has done a lot of the heavy lifting as we transition and I think that it has gone pretty smoothly. David and I have worked with the band for 30-some-odd years as a team already,” Latimer says. “In the transition towards David taking over, we have added three or four new conductors, and they are absorbing the spirit of the thing. It’s working out very well.”
When the Capitol City Band first started back in June of 1969, Elmer Ziegler, a mentor to Latimer, led the concerts, which back then took place in Vilas Park. Most of the time in the last half-century, the band has been led by Latimer, who was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Wisconsin Percussive Arts Society in 2018 for a lifetime of education, performance, and promotion of percussion as a solo and ensemble art form, leading the way.
Latimer, who turns 91 on June 27, will still have a heavy presence at the concerts where he can assist as needed and cheer the band on.
The opening Juneteenth concert will feature vocalist Megan Kramer performing “Blue Skies” and “Till There Was You. Trumpet soloist Zach Masa-Myers will perform “Ode for Trumpet.”
The Capitol City Band will perform a piece arranged by the late Dr. Frank Ferriano entitled “Festival March,” which combines “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Other selections, in the spirit of celebration, will include “Celebration of Spirituals,” “Daughters of Texas,” and Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration.”
Thursday’s Juneteenth concerts, and the nine concerts following, are free and open to the public … rain or shine. The music is for all ages and all cultures. Latimer recommends that you bring a chair to sit in. Rennebohm Park, which is going through a little bit of construction right now, is located at 115 N. Eau Claire Ave. in the Hilldale neighborhood.
