'One Practice, One Gig'

About 40 amateur and professional musicians gathered at dusk in Jane Reed’s backyard Saturday for their annual rehearsal before the 4th of July parade.

The band spilled out onto the street at the intersection of Park Way and Dracena Avenue, where neighbors have taken to convening a block party at the same time every year. Musicians consorted with their friends and tuned up while waiting for a quorum to arrive.

Most band members are longtime Piedmont residents, like trumpeter Al Norman, who was helping with parking.

Percussionist Benjamin Ring, 13, is the youngest member of the ensemble, not counting the two banner bearers, 11-year-olds Claire White and her friend Catherine Barr, who both hail from San Leandro.

Piedmont High School grad Rachel Bloom, now a sixth grade teacher in Palo Alto, grew up with the 4th of July parade. 

“This is kind of like a religion in our family,” she said.

The bass drummer said she's trying to work on her listening skills this year. "Then I’ll blend better into the band."

Since 1984, explained Reed, the band has played the same three classic marches: college fight songs “On Wisconsin” and “Notre Dame Victory March, and John Philip Sousa’s “Thunderer.” The tunes remain the same because, well, the band only rehearses once a year.

"We can’t be practicing and dodging cocktail drinks while marching,”  added clarinetist Allan Humphries.

Nonetheless, the leader of the percussion section—musician-about-town Ray Perman—laid a new cadence on his nine-member group: a samba style three against two which flips to two against three, then back again.

Drum major and retired judge Ken Kawaichi joked he was no band director as he admonished players to tune up and paced off the rows before giving the downbeat to start the one-block practice march down Dracena. 

For baton twirler Elaine Lindenmayer, a longtime Piedmont resident originally from St. Louis, the old tosses and turns came naturally as she stepped out in front of Kawaichi.

A nifty 180-degree turn in formation readied the band for the return to the starting place behind Reed’s house where a refreshment table had been set up. 

Afterwards, the thirsty band members enjoyed Perman’s mysterious “elixir.” Saxophonist Sally White had a glass in one hand and the leash of her family's golden retriever in the other.

Glockenspielist Ann Rapson, who hadn't played much since high school in Milburn, NJ before she joined the Piedmont band, pointed out a delicate repair needing to be made to one of the pins on her antique instrument.

“I was reluctant to play at first, after many years of not touching my instrument,” she confessed. “But this is so much fun. Who wouldn’t want to?”