Submitted Photo Ben Eder, left, is the director of the Minot City Band's annual John Phillip Sousa Concert set for Thursday, July 16, at Oak Park.

The Minot City Band presents its annual John Phillip Sousa Concert Thursday, July 16, at 7 p.m. at Oak Park under the direction of Ben Eder. City Band concerts are fee and open to the public.

This year is the 40th anniversary of the band’s first Sousa Concert in 1986, which was itself a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Sousa Band’s 1926 visit to Minot.

According to Minot City Band information, the band has a close connection to John Phillip Sousa. The band’s conductor in the early 1920s, G.C. Humphreys (sometimes spelled Humphries) knew Sousa and played with him in 1924. Humphreys wasn’t the only Sousa/Minot connection. Minot native Norma Fauchald was a vocal soloist with the Sousa Band from 1923-1924. Minot citizens tried desperately to get the Sousa Band to visit the city during Fauchald’s tenure, but the band’s schedule was so full that Minot had to wait until Thursday, Oct. 21, 1926.

On that day, the Sousa Band performed two concerts at the Minot High School Auditorium, an afternoon matinee concert and an evening concert. Extra seats were added to the auditorium and all possible standing room was filled. A total of 3,700 people attended the concerts, a record for Minot. One thousand tickets were reserved for students, who were able to purchase them at a special reduced rate. It was a major hit, and Sousa was reportedly impressed by the enthusiasm of the audience. He returned to Minot for an additional two concerts in 1928.

The band’s July 16 concert will be modeled after the concerts the Sousa Band played while touring around the country from 1892 to 1932. Sousa often opened concerts with an orchestral or operatic transcription, so the City Band’s concert will open with a transcription of Anton Dvorak’s Finale from the “New World Symphony.”

Sousa followed each piece of music that appeared on the program of his concerts with one of his own marches as an encore. As the marches did not appear in the program, he had someone hold up a placard which announced the name of the encore piece. The City Band will do likewise, adding six Sousa marches to the concert. Sousa band manager Harry Askin never announced in advance which marches would be played, so the city band will follow suit, with the exception of the final number.

The concert will continue with a piece the Sousa Band played at the matinee concert in 1926: Sousa’s transcription for band of Percy Aldridge Grainger’s traditional dance tune “Country Gardens.”

Sousa greatly added to the concert band repertoire, not just with his own original compositions but also by arranging numerous other pieces for concert band. “Country Gardens” is one example, as is the city band concert’s programmed piece “Turkey in the Straw: Cowboys’ and Old Fiddlers’ Breakdown.”

Sousa also helped popularize band compositions from his contemporaries. The band will follow suit with Percy Aldridge Grainger’s “Irish Tune from County Derry” and “Shepherd’s Hey.” Then, the band will play a non-march composition of Sousa’s, “Fugue on Yankee Doodle.” For 40 years, every Minot City Band Sousa Concert has ended with the same march, which also concluded most of the Sousa Band’s concerts. That march is an American favorite,”Stars and Stripes Forever.”

Ever since Jerry Spitzer, then Minot City Band director, put together the band’s first Sousa concert in 1986, the Sousa Concerts have been the band’s most popular concert of each season.