August 5, 2001 Concert

Director of the St. Joseph Municipal Band, Dr. Donald Moely, indicated the band concerts scheduled for Sunday, August 5 will feature a rather unique mother daughter combination of Dixie Detgen principal oboe of the band will be featured as a guest conductor and will also conduct the band to accompany her daughter Stacie Detgen performing a French horn solo. Special entertainment for the event will be the "Misfits."

Dixie Detgen retired after teaching band for 29 years in the Buchanan Community Schools. She currently teaches instrumental music in a private school, lessons and sectionals at Lakeshore Middle School, is the oboe instructor in the Salvation Army Arts and Education Program, plays organ and directs the choir at her church, plays oboe with the Southhold Wind Ensemble (South Bend, IN) and the St. Joseph Municipal Band (completing her 44th year) and owns her own business called Detgen Seminars and Clinics, working with bands and directors throughout the state. She holds memberships in MENC, where she is a nationally registered teacher, ASBDA, serving on the Foundation Board, NBA, IDRS, MSBOA, AF of M, SAI and was nominated to Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers in 1992. She was also the MSBOA Band Teacher of the Year in 1996.

Stacie Detgen, has been a member of the St. Joe Municipal Band for 21 years and is in her 13th year of teaching instrumental music education and her 8th year at Charlotte Junior High School. She is a native of Buchanan, and began playing the French Horn in 5th grade. Stacie has a Bachelors Degree from Michigan State University and a Master of Music Education degree from VanderCook College of Music in Chicago. Ms. Detgen has been a member of the Greater Lansing Symphony Orchestra, the Lansing Concert Band, the Meridian Community Band, the Capitol Area Brass Quintet, the Charlotte Lawrence Avenue Methodist Church orchestra and brass choir.

The Misfits is a comedy chorus directed by Joan Nozicka. This group of 34 recreational singers was formed in May of 1995 with 12 singers. Their objectives are to enjoy music and to entertain. This was to be done at local nursing homes to help "cheer-up" their residents. To accomplish this, they decided to do musical comedy with appropriate comical costumes. Each member designs and creates their own costume. This year their theme is ‘hit songs from hit movies.’ Now in their seventh year, they have performed more than 300 programs before various groups and organizations. Their travels have taken them to parts of Southwestern Michigan as well as Northern Indiana. In 1997 they traveled to Branson, Missouri, for a performance. Nozicka, now retired, had taught piano and organ privately for many years. With her musical background, she is able to select and arrange the music that the group performs. She prerecords the accompanying music that is used for each performance.

Conductor Dr. Moely said the concert begins with a Sousa march entitled "The National Fencibles." A Featured French horn soloist with the band will be the principal horn of the band, Stacie Detgen, who will perform a movement from a horn concerto by Mozart entitled Romanza. The accompaniment will be conducted by her mother, Dixie Detgen. Dixie Detgen will then conduct a Percy Grainger composition "Country Gardens," and a Leroy Anderson piece "Belle of the Ball."

The concert includes songs by the famous song composer Marvin Hamlisch entitled "Marvin Hamlisch Showcase." The concert then highlights some of the best of the big band era music by performing "Big Band favorites," arranged by Bob Lowden. The band concludes the concert with answering a request for the circus march "Barnum and Baileys Favorite," by Karl King.

The concerts are free to the public and are held at 3:30 and 7:30 p.m., each Sunday for the rest of the summer and including Labor Day, at the John E. N. Howard Band Shell across from the Whitcomb in downtown St. Joseph.