1975: Pet Rocks and Gerald Ford. Laverne & Shirley and the Captain & Tennille. Carlton Fisk’s game-winning home run. They’re all distant memories now, but one local cultural institution, founded that very same year, is going stronger than ever. It’s the Corning Area Community Concert Band, and it will ring in its golden anniversary with a concert on Sunday, November 9, at the Corning Museum of Glass auditorium.

The band was founded to help celebrate America’s 1976 bicentennial, which was a grand time for expressing civic and national pride. Originally dubbed the Corning Kiwanis Bicentennial Band, it quickly accumulated fifty-two members, with Bill Pillar at the helm. Back then, as now, it specialized in the inspiring melodies and toe-tapping rhythms of the best in traditional concert band music. It serves to this day as a reflection of our neighborhood, community, and national ideals.

The CACCB currently numbers sixty-five members of all ages and walks of life, ranging from students to senior citizens and amateurs to professionals. Remarkably, three of the original band are still playing these fifty years later: Geoff Boettner (euphonium), John Cherell (trumpet), and Jim Trondson (trombone).

“It’s been a long and pleasurable journey,” says Jim. “Every week at rehearsals, I’m surrounded by friends and memories. And after all that hyperventilating from playing the trombone, I’m quite elated to be part of that amazing sound!”

The capstone of the concert will be the debut performance of “The Glass Wilderness” by guest conductor Rossano Galante, who composed the piece specially for the occasion. Rossano, a Buffalo native (yes, he’s a Bills fan), is a graduate of the University of Southern California and studied under Oscar-winning composer Jerry Goldsmith. He has orchestrated numerous big-budget films and television series, such as The Wolverine, A Good Day to Die Hard, and Fantastic Four. He has written almost eighty commissions for ensembles and orchestras throughout the country, and his works have been published worldwide. His compositions are widely performed, and have received rave reviews from colleagues, professors, and students alike.

Rossano says that “The Glass Wilderness” was inspired by both the Corning Museum of Glass and its setting in the lush pastoral landscape of the Finger Lakes. “I was encouraged by CACCB director Tina Sochia to write something about the museum,” he explains. “I wanted to create some lyrical, heroic themes to capture the beauty and grandeur of this marvelous city, Corning. It’s a challenging composition, but I’ve worked with the CACCB in the past and I knew they’d be able to tackle it.”

But wait, there’s more: the band will also perform three other Galante compositions, including “Existence Infinite,” which is being dedicated to founding member Ken Salisbury, who passed away in January.

Rounding out the program are representative selections sampled from the band’s five decades of history; they will please and tantalize all ages and tastes. There will be familiar classics such as Leonard Bernstein’s overture to Candide, Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” and John Philip Sousa’s stirring ode to the Marine Corps, “Semper Fidelis” (you’ll recognize it immediately). Another favorite is “American Riversongs,” a medley in a folksong setting; it’s a tribute to the role of our rivers and canals in the growth of the nation.

The November concert doubles as the main fundraiser for the annual CACCB Scholarship, a thousand-dollar prize awarded since 1990 to a talented high school senior musician. The (strictly voluntary) donations collected at the concert are used to fund it. The winner is usually announced at a spring concert at the high school of the winning musician. And thus, the torch is passed to the younger generation, some of whom will surely be playing in the 100th anniversary concert in 2075!

The band travels, and has delighted folks in dozens of local concerts and brightened lives in many senior living facilities in Corning, Bath, Elmira, and Watkins Glen. Some notable venues include the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport, the National Soaring Museum in Big Flats, and a special performance at the Corning Museum of Glass to commemorate their renowned GlassBarge traveling the length of the Erie Canal for that waterway’s 2017 bicentennial.

A rather unusual highlight came in October 1995, at the ribbon-cutting of the I-86 bypass around the city of Corning; the band played in folding chairs on the brand-new asphalt highway! Another memorable gig came in 1999 at the grand opening of the new Dormann Library in Bath. The two speakers that day were former president Gerald Ford and retired CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite.

The CACCB also collaborates with many other community bands and ensembles from across the region: Hornell, Ithaca, Honeoye Falls/Lima, Elmira College, and Commonwealth University-Mansfield, and with Williamsport’s famous Repasz Band, which dates back to 1831. It helps mentor and nurture the younger generation by performing “Adopt a Band” concerts with high school musicians in Steuben, Schuyler, and Chemung counties. Many band members are themselves educators in our local school systems.

And oh, by the way, the musicians are not paid. They’re in it just for the innate joy of making music. They practice for countless hours, at home and in weekly rehearsals, because the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts. Eighty-plus past and current members will be performing at the anniversary concert, so the memories, and quite possibly some tears, will flow.

“This is the best the band has ever been,” says Jim, the trombonist and fifty-year member—and he should know.

The November 9 concert begins at 3 p.m., and it’s free to all by its very nature. There is no dress code; come as you are.