WANGBERG, Ludvig

WANGERG WILLSON, TRELOAR, VON WALD, NICHOLAS, REYNOLDS, BANTY

Posted By: Sharon R Becker (email)
Date: 11/30/2013 at 03:41:04

The New York Times
New York, New York
June 28, 2002, By Douglas Martin

Striking Up the Band, in the Iowa Style

It was a brilliant, timeless Sunday afternoon, the temperature in the high 80's, and Ludvig Wangberg was arranging the chairs so everyone would have enough elbowroom. The white-bearded, pixieish leader of the Clear Lake Municipal Band has been doing the same thing for 50 years.

"We have some great young piccolo players here," Mr. Wangberg said enthusiastically.

This is the heart of what Meredith Willson called the "hailstone and sarsaparilla belt," that corn-fed fragment of America where tubas, trumpets and trombones still come together to transport the soul. Mr. Wangberg was forever captivated when John Philip Sousa's band visited the dusty South Dakota town where he grew up and played "Stars and Stripes Forever."

And now Mr. Wangberg, 79, is in his 51st year directing the municipal band in a town of 8,400. He came a little after Mr. Willson, who grew up 10 miles away in Mason City and was a pretty good piccolo player himself, left the Clear Lake band for greener pastures. Not least was his musical "The Music Man."

Mr. Wangberg is the real goods: everything Harold Hill, the musical's con man, aspired to copy. He graduated from Juilliard, trained with New York's best horn players and played in Broadway orchestras. He came back to the Midwest to live what he viewed as a simpler, more productive life. Did he? Well, when he tells you he has taught 10,000 students music, his whole face seems to wink.

He raised his baton and unleashed the band's rich sound. Sailboats danced on the glacial lake behind what since last year has been the Ludvig Wangberg Band Shell.

On a park bench, a child rested his head dreamily on his father's knee and stared at the gleaming brass. Lovers listened, maybe, but looked only at each other. The lordly oaks rustled, a teeter-totter creaked. And why were those two elderly women having such a dandy old time?

"Because we're 78, and if we were 18, we wouldn't be here," one said, before breaking out laughing and saying it wasn't true, at least not totally.

Music is important in this section of the heartland. The first settlers could not carry books, but could bring a fiddle and a song. Barn dances followed. By the 1920's, the Iowa Band Law was on the books, giving towns the right to assess taxes to pay for bands. Partly as a result, many towns in the state boast bandstands of various sorts.

The Surf Ballroom a few blocks away drew entertainers from Count Basie to the Beach Boys. Sadly, it was where, in February 1959, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper played their last concert before dying in a plane crash just north of town. The Surf is still going strong.

Mr. Wangberg typically serves up marches, polkas, Dixieland, a rhapsody or two and a vocal number. The previous weekend, in the year's first concert, the theme was the United States' recent national trauma and recovery. The high point came when a singer belted out "New York, New York." The crowd roared.

"If you're going to be a little bit patriotic, this is the summer to do it," Mr. Wangberg said.

Mr. Wangberg's musical life began when he wanted to play his high school's one French horn, and he had to become the best to do it. It gathered steam when at 17 he won a national horn contest. He became first French horn for the municipal band of Sioux Falls, S.D., and received lessons from Sousa's former first coronet. He was drafted and spent 18 months at the front lines. After his discharge, he enrolled in Augustana College in South Dakota. His aspirations had somehow grown beyond the flat prairie horizon, and he went on to the Juilliard School in Manhattan. At the same time, he earned a master's degree in education from Columbia.

Then came one of those decisions that change the direction of a person's life. He had wrangled free passes to practice sessions of Toscanini's NBC Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, and he ingratiated himself with their horn sections. He visited them backstage to pick up pointers.

In the process, however, he learned how cutthroat the music business could be. In addition, with his wife teaching in Iowa, he had seen her only at Christmas for a few years, except for a short visit when their son was born.

So he decided to come home and accept a teaching job in a town near Clear Lake. Three years later, on May 28, 1951, he moved to Clear Lake, where the town band came with the job of school music teacher. He retired from the school in 1985, but kept the summer band, as well as leadership of the choir at Zion Lutheran Church.

Mr. Wangberg insists that he never relaxed his standards. But his brush with music's Olympus became, in a way, his gift to others.

"I'm going to treat you guys like the New York Philharmonic,: he tells his students, expecting "you will want to go as far as you can go with this."

But he did learn to play his audience.

"When I first came, I thought I was going to educate all of north Iowa on classical music," he said. "It wasn't but one or two concerts and I decided I was just going to entertain north Iowa."

His band in the park ranges from Michaela Treloar, a high school student who appreciates the challenge, to Harvey Von Wald who plays in a half-dozen other Iowa bands and, like Mr. Wangberg, has been on the Clear Lake band for 51 years. Then there is Bill Nicholas, a retired turkey farmer, who had not played his trumpet for 18 years but decided this year to give it another go.

"Music never gets out of your blood," Mr. Nicholas said. "I'm reliving my second childhood, and it sure is fun."

After the concert, a band member told Mr. Wangberg it had been a good one. He smiled a Fourth of July kind of smile and said he thought the horns had been especially good.

~ ~ ~ ~

NPR: Around The Nation Transcript, Day to Day
July 17, 2006
Alex Chadwick, host; Joyce Russell, reporter

Iowa Conductor Steps Down after 55 Years

Ludvig Wangberg, the conductor of Iowa's Clear Lake Municipal Band, stepped down this past weekend at the age of 83. Wangberg had led the band for 55 years and clearly loved working with the band. Joyce Russell of Iowa Public Radio reports.

ALEX CHADWICK, host: This is DAY TO DAY from NPR News. I'm Alex Chadwick.

NOAH ADAMS, host: And I'm Noah Adams. In Clear Lake, Iowa this past weekend, three generations of residents marked an unusual achievement by one of its senior citizens. The 83-year-old conductor of the Clear Lake Municipal Band directed his last concert after more than half a century on the job. Iowa Public Radio's Joyce Russell spoke with him before the big event.

JOYCE RUSSELL reporting: Standing at the band shell at City Park, you can see the town's namesake, Clear Lake. It sparkles in the sunlight on a Sunday afternoon in July. On stage, the white-haired Ludvig Wangberg mingles with his musicians as they tune up.

(Soundbite of musical instruments tuning)

RUSSELL: This is to be one of the band's last performances under Wangberg. Looking back, the conductor recalls his early introduction to band music when he was growing up one of 11 children in a South Dakota farm family. They once went to hear John Philip Sousa's band.

Mr. LUDVIG WANGBERG (Conductor, Clear Lake Municipal Band): He came to Madison, South Dakota. And, of course, it just thrilled me to hear John Philip Sousa to play, and he did Stars and Stripes Forever. And I said I want to have a band like that someday.

RUSSELL: Wangberg studied French horn at Juilliard in New York, where he could have played professionally. He opted instead for a more family friendly life in Iowa, and he now numbers in the thousands the amateur musicians he's directed.

Unidentified Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, the Clear Lake Municipal Band and our conductor, in his 55th season with the band, Lud Wangberg.

(Soundbite of music)

RUSSELL: Fifty-five years ago, Clear Lake Municipal Band already had a long tradition for Wangberg to build on. Its previous conductor served for 43 years, and Meredith Willson of Music Man fame once played piccolo and flute in this band. So, Wangberg says, he began with two objectives: challenge the musicians to keep them interested, and give the audience what they want.

Concertgoer Carol Reynolds (ph) says he's succeeded.

Ms. CAROL REYNOLDS: I like the overtures. I like the marches. And the Fourth of July, the concert was just phenomenal. Lud is very special.

RUSSELL: But Lud Wangberg's daughter has a slightly different take on his success. Mary Wangberg-Banty (ph) is one of several former band members who became professional musicians and who returned for guest appearances. She says her father's concerts have pleased the crowds over the years, while stretching them a little, too.

Ms. MARY WANGBERG-BANTY (Ludvig Wangberg's daughter): He'll open with a march, and then do an overture, which is the heaviest piece and the longest piece on the concert. So the overture, that's maybe his one point of educating the community. Last night, we played The Marriage of Figaro. The overture to The Marriage of Figaro.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. WANGBERG-BANTY: He absolutely adores working with the band, and that's kept him going.

RUSSELL: And the musicians return the affection. Trumpeter Greg Nicholas(ph) is an attorney by day. His father, wife, and two daughters have also played in this band.

Mr. GREG NICHOLAS (Trumpet, Clear Lake Municipal Band): It's been a wonderful, wonderful experience to sit under Lud's direction through the years. I can sometimes get a little bit emotional talking about it.

RUSSELL: Leading up to his last concert this past weekend, the conductor was keeping some details secret, but not all.

Mr. WANGBERG: Well, we're going to close with Stars and Stripes Forever. And I bring all the brass - the high brass and low brass - out to the front of the stage. And that will be our finale.

RUSSELL: And an echo of one influential concert Lud Wangberg heard in South Dakota long ago. For NPR News, I'm Joyce Russell.

NOTE: The band shell in Clear Lake's City Park was named the Ludvig Wangberg Bandshell. It was built in 1954.

Transcriptions and note by Sharon R. Becker, November of 2013