{"id":2967,"date":"2022-01-15T21:33:40","date_gmt":"2022-01-15T21:33:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libraryarchives.web.illinois.edu\/sousa\/?p=2967"},"modified":"2024-02-20T23:22:55","modified_gmt":"2024-02-20T23:22:55","slug":"parkland-college-band-records-newly-acquired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/2022\/01\/15\/parkland-college-band-records-newly-acquired\/","title":{"rendered":"Parkland College Band Records Newly Acquired"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Parkland Concert Band, Ernie Hoffman playing the bells, performing at Lodge Park, Monticello, Illinois, 1987.<\/p>\n

<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Sousa Archives acquired the Parkland College Band Records in December, and completed the finding aid to the new collection earlier this past week.\u00a0 This is a wonderful addition to our local Urbana-Champaign music collections.<\/p>\n

The Parkland College Band started forming December 8, 1969 and began rehearsals the first week of January 1970, two and half years after classes first started at the community college. Carolyn Whitney, who helped start the original band, served as its director for the first season and its first concert took place on March 3rd of that year.\u00a0 An announcement placed in Champaign\u2019s News-Gazette<\/em> on February 27, 1970 invited instrumentalists with at least two years of experience to join the free, non-credit, class as a community band.\u00a0 The first rehearsal began with twelve musicians but after six weeks, the ensemble had doubled in size.\u00a0 In 2001, the community ensemble had grown to 117 members.<\/p>\n

The band originally rehearsed in the basement of the First Methodist Church in downtown Champaign.\u00a0 However, because of the rehearsal hall\u2019s low ceiling, the band eventually moved its rehearsals to the Jefferson Life Building on Hill Street. \u00a0Beginning in 1978 the community band finally began regular rehearsals on the Parkland College campus.<\/p>\n

Although Carolyn Whitney served as the band\u2019s first director, her music background was choral music.\u00a0 When Erwin \u201cErnie\u201d Hoffman, hired in 1970 as a full-time faculty member for Parkland\u2019s music department, he started as the college\u2019s choral director even though his music background was directing wind ensembles.\u00a0 However, beginning in 1971, he took over directorship of the Parkland band from Whitney, who became the college\u2019s choir director, and he remained the band’s director until 1996.\u00a0 Since Hoffman\u2019s departure from Parkland College, the band has had eight different conductors including William Worra (1997-2001), Gregory Grove (2001-2005), Jeffrey Marshall (2005-2008), Verlin Richardson, Joseph Manfredo and Michael Allen (Fall 2008), Joseph Manfredo (2009-2011) and Lawrence Stoner (2011-2020).\u00a0 Currently Matthew Dixon, a trombonist and DMA alumnus from the University of Illinois, became the Parkland Band\u2019s eighth director in 2020.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Parkland College Band continues to serve the community by providing a creative performance outlet for amateur instrumentalists, and brings together different communities through collaborations with high school bands and other community bands around Central Illinois.\u00a0 The collection consists of concert programs, correspondence, course syllabi, newspaper clippings, and photographs documenting the band between 1973 and 2019.\u00a0 It also includes a newly published history of the band, Parkland Concert Band: The First Fifty Years<\/em> that was published in 2021.\u00a0 Special thanks to Connie Fairchild and Marilyn Marshall for making this important acquisition possible.\u00a0 Those interested in looking at the newly created collection finding aid can access it here<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0 For further information about this and the Sousa Archives’ other historical music collections please call 217-333-4577.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sousa Archives acquired the Parkland College Band Records in December, and completed the finding aid to the new collection earlier this past week.\u00a0 This is a wonderful addition to our local Urbana-Champaign music collections. The Parkland College Band started forming December 8, 1969 and began rehearsals the first week of January 1970, two and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3744,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2967\/revisions\/3744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}