Category Archives: VBF 2024

Merry Christmas from Vintage Band Festival!

On December 7 we kicked off the holiday season with Tuba Christmas in Northfield, the 5th year that Vintage Band Festival has presented Tuba Christmas on the campus of Carleton College. The event exceeded our expectations. We welcomed over 600 people in the audience and more than 60 tubists and euphonium musicians to the stage at Skinner Memorial Chapel.

Thanks to Carleton College for sponsoring our event. Thanks to Dr. Paul Niemisto for his conducting and his musical history lessons. And thanks to all those who donated and to our faithful volunteers. Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Photo: Debbie Miller
Photo: Debbie Miller
Photo: Debbie Miller
Photo: Wendy Sundquist
Photo: Wendy Sundquist

Meet Paul Niemisto, conductor of Tuba Christmas in Northfield

The conductor of Tuba Christmas in Northfield is Dr. Paul Niemisto. Paul is the founder and artistic director of Vintage Band Festival. He recently retired from the Music Department at St. Olaf College, where he taught and conducted for 38 years. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and has a doctorate  from the University of Minnesota.

Niemisto is also the founder of the Ameriikan Poijat (Boys of America), a Finnish American brass ensemble. In addition, he is the founder and conductor of the Cannon Valley Regional Orchestra, a community symphony orchestra based in Northfield, Minnesota that has been delighting regional audiences for over 40 years.

Since 1980, Mr. Niemisto has been traveling regularly to Finland, where he has taught at the Lieksa International Brass week; Klemetti Institute Summer Youth Orchestra Course in Orivesi, Chief Conductor and Conducting Instructor at STM Summer Wind Orchestra Institute at Murikka opisto, and has given courses at many Finnish conservatories, including Kuopio, Tampere, Jyväskylä, and Joensuu. He was a Fulbright Senior Research Fellow in Finland in 1999 and 2017. In February 2000, he was awarded the Finnish Military Music Cross (soltlasmusiikkiristi) for his years of work and research in Finnish bands.

Tuba Christmas in Northfield 2025 will be presented by Vintage Band Festival at 3:00 pm on Saturday, December 7, in Skinner Chapel on the campus of Carleton College.

Maurice “The Music Man”

One of the serendipitous highlights that some folks had during Vintage Band Festival 2024 was watching a pop-up concert given by the Alphorns. Maybe you found them at the Northfield Public Library plaza or later in front of Robin’s Egg Bakery or the Hideaway Coffeehouse and Wine Bar. Their lovely sound filled the air downtown in between the performances in Bridge Square. I can’t imagine what those horns would sound like in the mountain valleys of Switzerland!

Another unexpected moment was the appearance of Maurice “The Music Man”  before the festival began on Friday. Maurice drove all the way from Indiana with a truck loaded with musical instruments for sale. He parked his vehicle behind the VBF stage and opened it up to reveal dozens of brass and wind instruments from various eras of the 19th and 20th centuries. Throughout the day on Saturday, musicians from the VBF roster stopped to chat and sample Maurice’s fare, and some made purchases that they hadn’t expected to make before arriving in Northfield.

Photo credit: Off Beat Magazine

Maurice told me that he acquires his inventory in many ways and that some of the instruments need TLC before they’re ready for sale. He has two colleagues that help him with repairs, but even in his 80s, he’s the only one who takes the show on the road.

A few days after VBF 2024, I did a Google search on Maurice. I figured that someone somewhere must have written a story about him and I wasn’t wrong. I found a piece in Off Beat Magazine from 2018 titled “Maurice the Horn Wizard”, by Noé Cugny. Turns out that Maurice was a regular for years at the annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, but he got his start in Paris at the age of 17.

I have two regrets about my time with Maurice. I didn’t get a picture of him and I never caught his last name!

McNasty Brass Band to headline Friday eve, July 26

McNasty Brass Band is a collection of Minneapolis/St.Paul-based horn players and percussionists that fuse the Minnesota metropolitan sound with the spirit of New Orleans. The outcome of this fusion is hard-hitting dance music and high-energy live shows.

Each player works tirelessly outside McNasty Brass Band as a side man, some with national and international touring acts. That’s what makes McNasty special – these youthful but experienced side men come together and showcase their compositions, solos, group vocals and stage presence as front men. “McNasty Brass Band is a perfect example of why you shouldn’t make fun of the kid who is super into trumpet in 5th grade” (twincitiesmedia.net). Their recordings King Size Life and MNBB, encapsulate their live energy with exciting compositions, rowdy gang vocals and rip-roaring solos. The only thing missing is their dance moves!

McNasty Brass Band will play at 8:30 pm on Friday, July 26, 2024.

Jan Stevens and Lois Stratmoen, VBF volunteers extraordinaire

The next two profiles showcase two of the longest-serving Vintage Band Festival board members, Jan Stevens, our Fundraising Committee chair and Lois Stratmoen, our donor Correspondent.

Jan Stevens

VBF board member and chief fundraiser, Jan Stevens, is a person of action who leads by example. Since 1994 Jan has been involved with the Northfield Rotary Club, and specifically with the Rotary Youth Exchange Program. Jan has been a champion advocate for Northfield and after retiring from the real estate world this is what she had to say about living here:

“Northfield has everything, 45 minutes to an international airport, 5 times a day bus

service to the metro area, one hour to the Mayo Clinic Hospitals, two outstanding

colleges that bookend the north side of Northfield, culture diverse activities that rival

anywhere, recreational activities for all ages, and church and bar music that rivals much

larger communities.”

That civic pride and keen sense of the arts brings us to her involvement with VBF. It was Jan’s generous gift that enabled the Vintage Band Festival Fund to be created in 2023. The fund is part of Northfield Shares and was established to allow the Vintage Band Festival to develop a more sustainable financial strategy. Jan’s passion for our community is contagious!

Lois Stratmoen

When was the last time you received a hand-written note in the mail? VBF board member and Donor Correspondent, Lois Stratmoen, is known for handwriting notes, not only to patrons of the Vintage Band Festival, but also to Northfield area youth who are featured in the Northfield News.

Lois and her husband Noel have been citizens of Northfield for more than 50 years. Her list of civic leadership roles is impressive to say the least. Here are a few: former chair of the Northfield Hospital Board, former church council president of Bethel Lutheran Church, Board of Directors/Northfield United Way, Northfield Arts Guild member and cast member in many Guild musical productions, and co-recipient of the 2003 Northfield Sertoma Service to Mankind Award. We are honored to have the wisdom and personal touch of Lois Stratmoen serving VBF!

Meet VBF members Joy Riggs and Dan Bergeson

Joy Riggs

The Vintage Band Festival Board is fortunate to have Northfield journalist and author, Joy Riggs, as our secretary and Grants Coordinator. Joy has been integral in securing many rounds of grant funding over the years and that has been a major reason for the longevity of the organization.

Joy is the author of “Crackerjack Bands and Hometown Boosters” (the story of a Minnesota Music Man). The non-fiction book is the story of Joy’s great-grandfather and his life passion of developing community bands in several Minnesota towns. His commitment to civic pride, community participation and belief in the power of music to transform lives, continues through Joy’s volunteerism and the mission of the Vintage Band Festival. Great-Grandpa would be proud. Thank-you Joy!

Dan Bergeson

Mr. Bergeson is a doer. The Vintage Band Festival and Board members are indebted to Dan for his stellar leadership as President of the Festival since 2017, but his connection to the organization goes back to the beginning of the festival in 2006. He retired in 2018 from a 30-year career at Carleton College as Director of Auxiliary Services. You can hear Dan play his trumpet in several local brass ensembles and he recently took up the violin and the accordion. If there was a local percussion ensemble, I believe Dan would be the first gung-ho new percussionist!

Beasley’s Big Band with Courtney Burton

Beasley’s Big Band with Courtney Burton is a group of musicians dedicated to playing great big band jazz and having fun at the same time.  They are dedicated to preserving a “classic” big band style and  especially strive to honor the legacy of the Count Basie Orchestra.

Founded in 1991, Beasley’s Big Band has played many different venues for a variety of audiences, ranging from corporate parties and ballroom dances to intimate club dates and charity functions.  The name of the band comes from Chuck Beasley, the band’s founder, lead alto sax player, and chief musical arranger. Chuck passed in 2021, but the band and his legacy lives on.  The band’s classic big band sound can be attributed to Chuck, who arranged the majority of the songs the band plays. 

Jazz vocalist Courtney Burton was born to sing and she has been with Beasley’s Big Band for 18 years. With the band or her own combo—Court’s In Session—or a solo piano, she brings style, warmth, and a contemporary spirit to the music of the American Songbook and the swing era.

Beasley’s Big Band with Courtney Burton will perform at 8:30 pm on Saturday, July 27 in Downtown Northfield MN.

Chuck Beasley
Courtney Burton

Brass Messengers return to Vintage Band Festival

The Brass Messengers are a Minneapolis street band playing mostly original music inspired by global sources.  The BMs formed from the annual rubble of of the Heart of the Beast Mayday Parade and Ceremony in Minneapolis.  The musical origins were found in the music of Africa, the Caribbean, and the Balkans, but now the BMs play whatever works, throwing in a country song to the crying drinkers, a high speed polka or two for the midwest dancers, running in circles with the little ones, activating gatherings of our activist kin or a bit of Black Sabbath for the metal crowd.   But mostly, it is an original music that rises from the heart of the band that can only be described as a homegrown Minneapolis street music sound.

The Messengers play stages large and small, events from parties to bars, large theaters to street parades and funerals.  The Mess have been a part of the HONK community for nine years running, attending more than ten HONK festivals in Sommerville, Seattle and Austin, TX.

Brass Messengers will be on the VBF 2024 stage beginning at 6:45 pm on Saturday, July 27, 2024.

The Medalist Concert Band

The Medalist Concert Band, a volunteer group composed of 70 Twin Cities–area musicians, was founded in the fall of 1968. The primary purposes for the band are (1) to provide adult musicians with an opportunity to perform; (2) to provide Bloomington and the surrounding area with outstanding musical concerts; and (3) to provide young musicians with a model of music as a lifelong hobby.

Since its founding, the Medalist Concert Band has given more than 1,000 performances, many of them with high school and college bands, at summer concerts-in-the-park, and in church-sponsored programs. In addition, the band has distinguished itself through invitational appearances at such prestigious events as the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic, the Music Educators National Conference, and the Minnesota Music Educators Association Conference.

The Medalist Concert Band is proud to have earned a reputation as “one of foremost community bands in the nation,” as described by the National Band Association. The band was the 1996 recipient of the John Philip Sousa Foundation’s Sudler Silver Scroll Award, which is given annually to the top two community bands in the United States.

The Medalist Concert Band will perform in Bridge Square on Saturday, July 27, 2024 at 5:15 pm. This is the band’s first appearance at Vintage Band Festival.