East Winds Symphonic Band marks 40th anniversary, will play free Monroeville concerts
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When Jim Partridge used to attend Trinity Christian School board meetings in Forest Hills, he could always hear a band practicing somewhere in the building.
“I used to think, ‘Someday, when I have some extra time, I’d love to play in a band like that,’ ” said Partridge, 65, a Philadelphia native who has been playing trumpet since the fourth grade.
Partridge eventually found, and joined, that group: the East Winds Symphonic Band, which is marking its 40th anniversary this year and will perform two free concerts this month in Monroeville.
Partridge is one of the group’s newest members. Fellow brass-section members Roger Schneider and Ron Johnson, however, have been around since the beginning.
“Ron, Ed Dzenis and I were all members of a group called the East Suburban Concert Band,” said Schneider, of Murrysville, who plays baritone. “Some of us were pretty serious amateur musicians, and the quality of that band wasn’t always satisfying for us.”
So the trio formed a new band, stole a few members from the old one, and began bringing in additional musicians, primarily from Pittsburgh’s eastern suburbs.
A contact sheet from the band’s formation in the fall of 1981 has a heading listing them as the “??? ??? Symphonic Band.”
“We hadn’t even settled on a name yet,” Schneider said with a laugh.
Eventually, they decided to call themselves the East Winds Symphonic Band, began rehearsing on the third floor of the Wilkinsburg borough building and played their first concert on Feb. 1, 1982, in the Wilkinsburg High School auditorium. After its first year, it doubled in size from 15 to 30 members. Today, the band has more than 70 members, not just from the eastern suburbs but also from Moon, Ligonier, Mars and Sewickley. They rehearse at a Russian Orthodox church in Munhall.
“The band kind of grew in fits and starts,” said Johnson, who has been playing tuba since the sixth grade. “At one time, we had (internationally known jazz player) Randy Purcell and (River City Brass principal trombonist) Carl Jackson in the trombone section. It was only one season, but man, did the trombones sound great.
“And for a little while, Bill Caballero, the principal French horn with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, played with the band.”
In addition to performing throughout the Pittsburgh region, the band has traveled overseas to Ireland for a brief tour in 2019, started the Three Rivers Community Band Festival in 2004 and in 2008 earned the Sousa Foundation’s Sudler Silver School Award for Community Band Excellence.
Johnson said his favorite concert was the band’s 2012 performance at the Chautauqua Institution in New York.
“We worked so hard because everyone was thinking, ‘It’s Chautauqua!’ ” Johnson said. “We played a piece that included their organ, and it was really amazing.”
Under the direction of Susan Sands, the band will perform at 4 p.m. Aug. 14 at the Community College of Allegheny County’s Boyce Park campus and at 3 p.m. Aug. 28 at the Tall Trees Amphitheater at Monroeville Community Park West.
The Aug. 14 concert, presented by the Monroeville Arts Council, will honor the memory of longtime council members Mary Lou Span, Margaret Caine and Sheila Cartiff.
For more on the band, visit EWSB.org.