Each week during June and July, the Karl L. King Municipal Band presents its Sunday evening concerts in beautiful Oleson Park at the historic Karl L. King Band Shell, and each week they present a wide variety of band music to hopefully appeal to all ages and musical tastes. This week’s concert on Sunday will be no exception. Beginning at 7:30 p.m., conductor Jerrold P. Jimmerson and assistant conductor Dan Cassady will offer selections in many different styles during this hour-long program.

If marches are your favorites, then you will hear several, from Karl King’s Neddermeyer Triumphal, J.C. Heed’s circus march, In Storm and Sunshine, and Roland F. Seitz’s March Grandioso, to the unusual style of Pierre Leemans with his March of the Belgian Paratroopers.

Many people enjoy those classic overtures that the band plays each week, and this concert will include Austrian composer Franz von Suppe’s “Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna.” This light-hearted operetta included lots of enjoyable music, and this overture is equally at home in the opera hall, on the concert stage, in the Band Shell, or even in an animated Bugs Bunny cartoon.

Other people enjoy the various Karl King compositions that are presented each week. Included in this concert will be King’s beautiful aerial waltz, Mystic Night. Still others wait for those fast-paced circus galops, which this week will feature King’s Excelsior.

There will even be a beautiful slower selection titled On A Hymnsong of Philip Bliss, based on a traditional church hymn “It Is Well With My Soul,” as arranged by David Holsinger.

Broadway musicals always get those toes tapping, and this week will include highlights from Man of La Mancha. Guest vocal soloist with the band on this selection will be Collin Ellsbury, a 2019 graduate of Fort Dodge Senior High. Ellsbury is a 2023 graduate of Oklahoma City University, earning the combined degrees of a B.M. in music theater and vocal performance as well as a B.A. in philosophy and political science. Ellsbury’s resume highlights include performing in New York City as a national semifinalist for the NATS Music Theatre Competition, appearances in both The Sound of Music and La Boheme at the Bay View Festival in Michigan, and performances at the Kimmel Center in Pennsylvania with the Broadway Dreams Foundation. In the fall, Ellsbury will begin work on his M.M. in vocal performance and pedagogy at New York University, emphasizing music theatre performance, with an anticipated graduation date of 2025.

Included also on the evening program will be an up-tempo look at music from the major swing bands of the 1930’s and 1940’s, capturing the essence of the Jazz Age. Each band in that era had their own unique “signature sound,” with these various sounds all coming together in an original selection titled “Jitterbug!” by Robert Buckley.

Persons attending these concerts are reminded to bring along their own lawn chairs, since there is no public seating provided. These summer concerts are provided for everyone free of admission charge by the City of Fort Dodge. The Good Shepherd Lutheran Church also offers a homemade ice cream social before the concert starts each week, beginning at 6:30 p.m. In case of inclement weather, the concert may be canceled at the starting time.