Lansing native part of New Horizons Band in Cedar Rapids - 'They sure don't sound old!'

What a great review - to a fourth grader the band may look old and certainly some of the music they play is old, but they surely don't sound old. It doesn't get any better.
      
In the background, instrumentalists were releasing trills and scales of warm-up exercises for an October concert at the Senior Fair at the Scottish Rite Temple, while band director Alan Lawrence outlined the New Horizon Band organization. It started in Rochester, New York, in the early 1990s as a concert band activity for folks 50 and older, he said. The Cedar Rapids band was the 30th to be formed and is now in its sixth season. It has about 40 membersr. Iowa City New Horizons Band was the third group in the country, Lawrence noted. In Iowa there are also New Horizons Bands in Cedar Falls and the Quad Cities. Now there are over 100 bands across the nation.

      Recruiting musicians - Third and fourth graders are a target audience of the band at the elementary schools. Hopefully, their interest is kindled in playing a band instrument. The band plays marches, ragtime, popular songs, light classics and patriotic tunes. They also may demonstrate many of the instruments. Call Doris Larson, 319-364-3542, or Joan Jacob, 319-366-3365, to schedule a school program.
      "Music education programs everywhere are under fire right now," Lawrence said. "It's hard for them to find funding. We step into the role of showing children this is a lifelong activity."
      The New Horizons Band of Cedar Rapids has become the "official" band for the city's Veterans' Day and Memorial Day ceremonies. The band has also participated in the Festival of Trees, the Cedar Memorial Christmas Pageant, Marion Swamp Fox Festival, Shrine Circus and more.
      The band performs for civic groups and churches and has been the opening act for summertime municipal band concerts.

      Serendipity rules - Lawrence faced the challenge before the Senior Fair concert of taking attendance and arranging the right number of chairs in each section for the number of band members on hand for the day. Flexibility is a key in directing a band of volunteers.
      "It has managed itself incredibly well from the very first," Lawrence said. There were 11 people in the original group and they are all still involved. One of the issues has been to have a good balance of instruments - so many flutes, so many tubas.
      "Amazingly, people have just come, and when we needed some clarinets, some clarinets showed up. Some French horn players have come along and added to our classiness. The right numbers ... that's just one of the serendipitous things about this group," he extolled.
      Socializing is a big part of why so many musicians volunteer so much of their time. The pleasure of bringing music to a variety of audiences prompts members to pay a $60 fee each January and July which is used to pay the director and to purchase music and equipment. The uniform is a royal blue shirt with the logo, black pants or skirts in winter and khaki pants in summertime. A board makes spending decisions and decides what gigs to take. Rehearsals are every Tuesday, 9:30 to 11:30 a.m., in the Coe College Band Room in the basement of Sinclair Auditorium.
      The original idea of the New Horizons Band concept, developed by Dr. Roy Ernst with the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, was that this activity would be available to people who had not had any musical training in their lives.
      "The reality of it is these are mostly people who were involved in instrumental music in junior high and high school, sometimes in college, but for the most part didn't pursue professional careers as musicians," said Lawrence. "Now in their retirement years, this is something they want to put their energy into. We're the beneficiaries of the dedication of this group."
      In concert - The Senior Fair concert lasted about 40 minutes with foot tapping, flag-waving patriotic pieces and popular music. The repertoire included a clarinet polka, an upbeat Italian polka called the "The Tick Tock Polka." The clear, brassy big band sound of American marches reverberated in the temple auditorium. The English March from "The Bridge On the River Kwai" prompted the audience to whistle along. "The Prune Song" was one of the more sedate numbers. The Latin beguine for flutes was somewhat more relaxing.
      A medley of highlights from Meredith Wilson's "The Music Man" seemed natural - "The Wells Fargo Wagon," "Till There was You" and "Seventy-Six Trombones." The finale was the musical statement of American pride, "This is My Country."
      
      Who is that waving the flag? - During the concert, the director introduced the band's "cheerleader" and a favorite member of the band - the flag-waver and assistant percussionist - Doris Larson. Incidentally, she celebrated her 90th birthday in October. During the "Ioway" corn song, Doris brought out and waved her stuffed ear of corn on a stick.
      Doris thanked percussionist Janice Cummings for setting her up with the props for her job as band spirit leader. They came up with the idea when the band was waving flags on a float during a Fourth of July parade. If she doesn't have a prop, Doris claps her hands over her head or pumps her white cane like a drum major's staff . . . white cane? Yes, Doris is legally blind, you see. A year and a half ago, she woke up one morning without sight. Only a faint bit of light and blurred movement remained.
      As a charter member of the New Horizons Band of Cedar Rapids, Doris played a trumpet. It has been her instrument of choice since she was a young schoolgirl in Lansing, in northeast Iowa.
      Her loss of sight wasn't enough reason to give up an activity she has nurtured and loved for six years. She continues her support of the band by making calls - she will be lining up gigs this winter in the elementary schools.

      A lifelong activity - "When I was in eighth grade, I had a trumpet," Doris Larson began. "Superintendent Torlief Rickansrud came to town and got a band organized. He took it upon himself to teach us, too ... himself. Just think, can you imagine a superintendent doing that nowadays? So we had a band going."
      "The trumpet was a part of me," Doris continued. "I played in the high school band. In high school I was the one who got all the music ready for our concerts." The seniors in high school formed a little band and went on a tour of some towns in Wisconsin. Her future husband was a baritone player in the band.
      Doris wore trousers in the band because she was a tomboy. "We could wear what we wanted to," she remembered.
      When Doris was a high school senior in 1932, it was discovered that her grandmother had tuberculosis. Doris postponed college to stay with her and care for her. She would practice on her trumpet about an hour each day.
      After her grandmother died about three years later, Doris was told she had scar tissue on her left lung. A doctor said she saved herself by playing the trumpet.
      "We'd play concerts once a week in the summertime. People in Lansing would play with us," said Doris. "I'd get the program ready, get it in the paper, see that the chairs were all there for us. If somebody was absent, I would drop them a card and say we missed you. I did all that when I got out of high school and my grandmother was still living.
      After her grandmother died, Doris used her savings, and with the some financial help from the merchants of Lansing, she earned a two-year teaching certificate at Iowa State Teacher's College in Cedar Falls in 1937.
      She taught elementary classes in Whitten and Eldora then went back to ISTC in Cedar Falls and received a four-year degree in 1944 in physical education. It was 21 years later in 1965 that she got her master's degree in special education at the State College of Iowa, in Cedar Falls. The school's name changed to the University of Northern Iowa in 1967.
      The trumpet went to school with Doris, the teacher, wherever she was. She always observed Veterans' Day with the children by playing "Taps."
      Ira and Doris Larson were married in 1944. Doris didn't play in a band for 27 years while she raised their six children - four sons and two daughters.
      Then she saw a West Music ad asking for people interested in starting a New Horizons Band. Doris helped recruit new members. Rehearsals began at Coe College.
      "We owe a lot to Coe College for that," Doris remarked. "Alan Lawrence has been with us since we started, too." She said Alan couldn't get used to the adults being quiet when he talked to them, unlike younger students. Also, they are always on time.
      The band began organizing about the time Doris lost her husband in January of 1997. It filled a gap in her life then, and still does now, even though she no longer plays her trumpet. She said neither she nor her husband learned to play by ear.
      When she lost her sight, she was so distraught she asked her daughter Greer to put the instrument away. But there are lots of facets to a good band and this one needs a percussionist and a cheerleader, too.