G-G Band

Official opener of New York City's summer outdoor concert season is that dapper, 53-year-old white-headed boy among U. S. bandmasters, Edwin Franko Goldman. Every summer his concerts take place during a ten-week season on alternate nights at Central Park Mall and New

York University. New York likes to come and loll on the grass, wheel its babby-carriage up & down, drink its pop as Bandmaster Goldman plays from a large, catholic repertory: chorales and fugues of Johann Sebastian Bach, waltzes of Waldteufel, operatic gems and band transcriptions of modern works like Claude Achille Debussy's La Cathedrale Engloittie and Ottorino Respighi's Pines of Rome. Elsewhere throughout the city the band is also to be heard: its programs are sent by wire and amplifier to all Manhattan's public parks.

Month ago the 14th season of free concerts began, called for the first time the Daniel Guggenheim Memorial Concerts in honor of the mining tycoon, who with his brother Murry sponsored them during his lifetime and after his death last September (TIME, Oct. 6) left provision for their perpetuation. A first night audience of 18,000 stood, heads bared, as the band played Frederic Francois Chopin's Funeral March in Daniel Guggenheim's memory.

Thus endowed and with future summers assured, Bandmaster Goldman announced last week a new, ambitious project: to endow his band as a year-round organization, with its own clubhouse, rehearsal halls and classrooms. A huge chorus would be formed. Young artists could get auditions, musicians find permanent employment. Offering all the advantages of a musical club, this Goldman Band Association of America will campaign, as did Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Thea- tre, for 100,000 persons who will pay into its fund a modest $1 per year.

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