Sag Harbor Community Band Will Get a New Venue This Summer

This summer, the Sag Harbor Community Band will pack up its instruments and move from its longtime home at the American Legion on Bay Street, where it has performed weekly summer concerts from the patio in front of the building for the better part of four decades.

But the band is not traveling far. It will set up on the west side of Marine Park, about a block away, where it will perform from the Suffolk County showmobile portable stage, for eight Tuesday nights, starting July 11 and ending August 29.

The decision to move the band was made last year after Sag Harbor Police Chief Austin J. McGuire voiced his concern that allowing the audience to sit on lawn chairs in the middle of Bay Street was an accident waiting to happen even if, as was the case, the road was blocked by police cars on either side of the Legion building.

Bruce Beyer, the band’s president, agreed that it was time to find a new home for the band.

“When I grew up, Bay Street wasn’t what it is today,” Beyer said this week. “It wasn’t used by thousands of cars a day.”

Despite McGuire’s concerns, the Village Board agreed to allow the band its swan song in 2022 before Mayor Jim Larocca, Beyer, and others scouted new locations. John Steinbeck Waterfront Park, the end of Long Wharf, the First Presbyterian (Old Whalers’) Church, and Mashashimuet Park were among those considered before Marine Park was chosen.

Beyer said moving to Marine Park makes the most sense because the band will be able to perform on a bandstand that will help project the sound and prevent it from being dissipated by the breeze.

But renting the showmobile does not come cheaply. Beyer estimated that it will cost about $1,000 a day. Most of that will be covered by the village this year because the Village Board added a $7,500 donation to the band in its budget.

Beyer, whose parents Robert and Florence Beyer, were charter members of the band when it formed in 1957, said it is simply one of the things that makes Sag Harbor, well, Sag Harbor.

Robert Beyer played trumpet and Florence Beyer played drums in what was originally intended to be a marching band under the leadership of Pop Mazzeo, a Pierson High School music teacher.

“I remember when they came home all excited when the band was formed, Beyer said of his parents. He has played bass drum in the band for years.

Originally, the band marched in local parades on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Veterans Day. When the membership began to age, the band was transformed into more of a concert band, with members seated in front of the Sag Harbor Cinema and other locations on Main Street to perform as the parade passed by.

Beyer said he was pleased to see a number of younger musicians, many home from college, joining the band’s ranks.

Current musical director David Brandenburg, who has been with the band for more than a decade “has got us playing pieces we never thought we could play,” Beyer said.

Beyer’s goal for the band is to have a bandstand erected in one of the village’s parks with the names of the founding members listed on a plaque. This week, he said the time may have come to launch a fundraising drive to that end.