40 Thursday, August 29, 2024 BATTLE CREEK SHOPPER NEWS http://www.thebattlecreekshopper.com
See CONCERT on 41WILL KOWALSKI
Sports Editor/Asst. Editor
Last Thursday evening, among
other tunes, the Cereal City Concert
Band played a medley of songs from
the movie The Sound of Music on
the Fantasy Forest stage at Leila
Arboretum – with The Sound of
Music movie being based on the
real-life story of the Von Trapp fam-
ily singers performing in Austria.
The Austria connection was right
on the money – as the CCCB’s per-
formance on Aug. 22 was a fundrais-
er for the band’s July 5-14, 2025 trip
to Schladming, Austria to participate
in the prestigious Mid-Europe Wind
Band Festival.
Funds raised last Thursday came in
the way of a suggested $10 per per-
son donation at the entrance gate to
the Fantasy Forest area.
And more fundraising efforts for
the CCCB for its trip to Austria will
continue through next spring and
Cereal City Concert Band holds fundraiser
at Arboretum for 2025 trip to Europe
A side-stage view of the Cereal City Concert Band performing on the Fantasy
Forest stage at Leila Arboretum last Thursday – an event that was a fundraiser
for the band’s trip to play at a prestigious event in Austria in July 2025. (Shopper
News photo by Will Kowalski)early summer.
Tunes from The Sound of Music,
along with a medley of Beatles
music, were part of the CCCB’s
playlist at the fundraiser – which
also included performances by the
Riverside Connection Dance Band
and the Redtones band.
And audience-wise, over 100
spectators were on hand to hear the
CCCB in action.
“The fundraising project and
aspect for raising money for us for
the Austria trip next summer has
just been bonkers,” said assistant
conductor Amanda Burdette, who
led CCCB’s performance at the
Arboretum for head conductor Dr.
Stephen White.
“Everybody is stepping up with
donations – including people who
came out for tonight’s concert,
through things like corporate and
business and organizational and fam-
ily and individual donations, throughcan drives, through anything we can
come up with. And getting the word
out there for our fundraising efforts
has been great, too. More and more
people are hearing about us. We’ve
pumped up the publicity. And along
with the fundraising publicity, the
publicity has also led to another 13
people wanting to audition with us to
be in the band, which is certainly a
record for us.”
Burdette said that CCCB’s upcom-
ing opportunity to perform in Austria
“kind of feels unbelievable, fantasti-
cally unbelievable.”
“At first, we didn’t think it could
happen, because it’s just such a big,
big event, and we’re just a small
town community band. But we’re
getting noticed and recognized, and
it just feels really good to know we
were one of the few bands in the
country to get an invitation to per-
form in Europe.
“And overall, one of the main
things to remember is, we’re all
amateurs. We’re part of the Cereal
City Concert Band because we love
to play instruments, and we love to
play concerts for people. We love to
perform, and to make people happy.
It’s pretty expensive for our mem-
bers and for our band to perform,
because we always play for free, but
yearly budgets for us via fundrais-
ing and community support keeps us
going, and fundraising for the trip toEurope will help us with our extra
expenses of making sure all of us in
the band will be able to make the trip
to Austria.”
Among the CCCB’s future fund-
raising gigs for its 2025 excursion to
Europe include donations of $50 for
local and area people who want their
pianos tuned; can drives; and a silent
auction and dinner event on Monday,
Sept. 16 at Territorial Brewing Co.
on Avenue A in Springfield.
For the silent auction/dinner, tick-
ets are priced at $50 per person and
include a dinner buffet, beer tickets,
entertainment, “and a lot of really
cool items to bid on,” Burdette said.
“Among the items up for auction
will be tickets I got us for an upcom-
ing performance by the Brass Band
of Battle Creek,” Burdette said, “plus
one of our members is donating a
week vacation in Colorado.
“Anything we can do fundraiser-
wise, we’re going to try to do.”
To make donations, or to be a
sponsor for the Europe trip at a vari-
ety of monetary levels ($5,000 to
$100), visit cerealcityconcertband.
org, see the CCCB’s Facebook page,
or call (269) 962-2153.
Following is a current list of Cereal
City Concert Band members (a non-
profit group that has been in exis-
tence since 1987):