Sharon Curley’s fingers danced over the keys of a bass clarinet. From atop Hopkinton’s bandstand stage on a Wednesday evening in July, she carried on the notes of a family and community tradition.
It wasn’t long ago that Curley’s grandmother, Martha Clapp, made the same clarinet sing. Between Concord, Mass., and Concord, N.H., she and her husband filled their lives with over five decades of community band music. The 91-year-old passed the tune on to her granddaughter, who grew from a young player into an experienced co-conductor alongside the town ensemble.
“With my grandmother and this band, they were both things that you can just come back to,” said Curley, who left Hopkinton on separate occasions for college and work. “This is the kind of music that you can just pick up right where you left off.”
The Hopkinton Town Band always welcomed her home.
A new measure
The original iteration of the Hopkinton Town Band disbanded before World War II, despite its popularity in the mill days of the 1850s. After the group ended, residents resigned themselves to parades that rolled through town with car-mounted record players rather than live music.
When Luciele Gaskill joined a troupe of local children playing music for the 1965 Little League parade, she became part of the musical renaissance in Hopkinton whose legacy would span decades.
The town loved the young players’ marching performance so much that it invited them back for the Memorial Day Parade. Soon after, the band made an appearance at the Hopkinton State Fair. From that point on, it blossomed into a community soundtrack.
Gaskill, now 88, remains its only original member.
Over the years, she flipped through dozens of concert programs. She watched the number of members dwindle, then climb. She thanked Bob Lewellen when he donated a bandstand to the group in his wife’s name. As the band’s co-director, she even switched to cowbells when playing the tenor saxophone became too difficult in later years.
Her love for the band has not yet reached its final measure.
“It just lifts everything off your shoulders and makes you feel good,” Gaskill said. “I know several of the players have said the same, that playing the music is a great relief from the daily pressures of the world.”
She still attends each concert and stopped performing only recently. Though the faces onstage may have changed with the decades, the lasting camaraderie has not.
“It’s just fellowship, I guess,” Gaskill said. “The great fellowship.”
Picking up the baton
Curley stumbled upon that sense of fellowship in seventh grade, when Clapp brought her along to play in a concert. She remained a band member throughout middle school, high school and college. Even though the now-38-year-old graduated from the University of Connecticut with a euphonium degree and planned to teach music, she never expected to find herself on the stepstool in Hopkinton.
“I realized that I really wanted to keep music a thing of passion and not my career,” Curley said.
The Hopkinton bandstand remained her refuge. Beneath its wood-shingled roof, she found a community not only of musicians, but of friends. Curley’s musical background meant she could step in front of the ensemble at practices whenever conductor Jim Wojewoda needed a break. Her grandmother’s presence was an added bonus.
As she spent more time with the band, Curley grew to love conducting. It reminded her of a puzzle — though the sections already fit together, she could offer them guidance on how best to connect. With repertoire spanning from the 1812 Overture to Stevie Wonder and Grease medleys, she and the band found no shortage of variety to experiment with in secluded practices.
Then, in early July, Wojewoda fell sick right before the concert. A nervous Curley stepped in to lead an entire performance — and did so with the ensemble behind her.
“To feel the support from the band in that moment, to have my grandmother here for that moment….I think that we can call that a core memory,” Curley said.
Wojewoda had watched Curley grow up onstage for 15 years. He gladly began sharing his baton with the new co-director, adding that moment to his long list of favorites at the band’s helm.
“Running from lightning storms. Parades. Trying new stuff out with the band,” Wojewoda said, listing some of his other favorites. “I just like playing with these guys. It’s a secret utter joy of mine to get up here, to be able to sculpt all of these disparate people into one sound.”
He raised his baton in the air as the sun set behind the Contoocook River. The band readied itself to play. Curley waited onstage, just as she did every Wednesday evening throughout the summer. Gaskill watched from the grass. Clapp reclined in a patterned lawn chair, her green-and-purple knitting project lying forgotten over a nearby walker.
The ensemble held its breath, its players at attention. Drumbeats paused. The audience stilled.
Then, with a flourish, the music began.
Abby DiSalvo can be reached at adisalvo@cmonitor.com