Music by Moonlight

On Saturday night, we attended the Fredericksburg Big Band’s annual “Music by Moonlight” concert in Hurkamp Park, which benefitted the local Salvation Army. The band was founded in 1966, and has been performing this particular concert for 19 years. They are especially good, with just about everyone in the band capable of taking a solid solo, and this event gets a huge turnout. As an added attraction, local celebrity Anthony Campbell (winner of the NBC Today show’s Super-Star contest) sang the National Anthem, and the Salvation Army Brass Band provided warm-up and intermission entertainment.

The band has a huge repertoire of well-known and some lesser known standards, and has a female vocalist who is featured on many of the numbers. The phase of the moon was all wrong for the advertised moonlight, but the band played over 2 hours, well past nightfall.

The bandleader is Mike Cappetto, who aside from being a talented sax player, also did instrument repair during my son’s rough-on-an-instrument high school marching band days. After someone fell on his trumpet in the bleachers, we took it to Mike for demangling, and later, when it was time for an upgrade, he helped us pick out a professional quality used horn. He’s a super nice guy, and quite a character, and we always enjoy seeing him perform.