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Dear TubaForum Community,
Five military bands have shut down this month, aka “inactivated.” Each of the 5 Air National Guard bands rostered and estimated two tuba and two euphonium positions–sometimes more!
Now 20+ jobs are gone: part time salary, FULL TIME BENEFITS.
I spent twenty two years as a tuba player in the 566th Air Force Band, the Air National Guard Band of the Midwest, Peoria, IL. I utilized the education benefits and received two Masters Degrees, utilized the family medical and dental insurance, took advantage of a retirement savings plan, AND EARNED A PENSION (to collect when I turn 60). And I have inexpensive medical insurance from age 60 for me and my wife, for life.

Now this is gone for future generations.
To my other service brothers & sisters, beware: The pen is mightier than the sword.

Jack Kinsella, SMSgt (ret.)

This saddens me. I completely understand the importance of morale, and I also completely understand how incredibly flexible these modern-day base bands have become - as far as popular styles that they can perform. I can't say that their jobs are absolutely essential, as none of my music performance jobs are essential either, but - considering the trillions of dollars of annual federal waste, which is all linked to absolute corruption - it just seems like there might possibly be enough honest people in the federal government who could have found something else to cut instead, as there is plenty that very badly actually needs to be cut.

The conditions of those bands seem perhaps overly generous as well IMHO. In my professional European orchestra, we were all on a 40 year pension track. I know the US military bands are giving something like 40% salary at 20 years, and full pension at 30 years. I've known lots of folks in the US bands who got in early, got out at (say...) 40 years of age, and started new careers. That seems unnecessarily . . . generous.

I'm pretty sure they needed the funder for DEI training.

UncleBeer wrote: ↑Sun Mar 03, 2024 7:21 pm The conditions of those bands seem perhaps overly generous as well IMHO. In my professional European orchestra, we were all on a 40 year pension track. I know the US military bands are giving something like 40% salary at 20 years, and full pension at 30 years. I've known lots of folks in the US bands who got in early, got out at (say...) 40 years of age, and started new careers. That seems unnecessarily . . . generous.

' controversial, and requires courage to post something like that on a site like this in this thread, but I have to admit that it has occurred to me that military personnel who are not combat personnel maybe should be required to work as long as people in other industries in order to be eligible for retirement from military service. So mark me down is another unpopular, but please read my previous post that collected a couple of "thank"s.

My friend - who auditioned with his school sousaphone into Pershing's Own - had actually the primary and overwhelming motive to simply avoid being sent to Vietnam and being killed. His brother chose the angle of scholarship, as he ended up being salutatorian his graduating class, and my friend took the tack of working his tail off to be chosen to be in (any) military band. He had no idea how hard he was working in comparison to others, but it's pretty obvious that he worked rings around most everyone else, as he would have been perfectly happy playing in a base band. He stayed in for half of an enlistment while being parked in a base band and then - when they strongly encouraged him to audition for Pershing's Own (as it's more than obvious to me that that's where they intended to put him all along, but they're simply wasn't an opening when he first auditioned), that ended up being a full enlistment on top of the half, but - as soon as that was done, he was done, and of course he didn't retire but he also didn't get sent to Vietnam and didn't get killed.

I wondered about the reason for that amount of cuts, especially since a mentor and friend of mine was a long-time Commander of one of the affected bands, and I had been following his social media posts hoping there would be a last-minute reprieve.

A little Googling found this Facebook post abstract (It shows up in search results, but after the band was deactivated, they pretty much scrubbed their page) from last year from the now-former Air National Guard Band of the Southwest:

“… The Director of the Air National Guard, Lieutenant General Michael A. Loh, has announced that all Air National Guard bands will be eliminated next year to enable an increase in cyber warfare capabilities...”

I feel like this was inevitable. About 15 years ago, some congress members started throwing crosshairs on the military bands as an "example of frivolous government spending." This was a time I really wanted to be in one of the DC bands (and auditioned for the half-dozen opportunities that came up), with my reasoning being the job security. A professor pointed out that "even something that looks safe now is still in just as precarious a position as anything else you were considering."

But even more than the 20+ tuba/euph jobs, that's a few hundred musicians just thrown into the freelance world. It sucks because of the shrinking number of jobs and growing talent pool, which also means our bargaining chips are shuffled poorly, as well. Many of those players only have skills in concert bands (euph/sax especially) while the others are probably going to further saturate the audition pool for available orchestra jobs. Many will also likely give up trying to pursue music as a career, which also is a big shame.

That being said, the military bands were established at a time that the American concert band was still a popular art form. I can understand the desire to "modernize" music in the military, but there's two issues with it:

1. The bases which housed these bands likely won't replace them with other musical ensembles.
2. Even if they are attempting to modernize, more popular, contemporary genres utilize far fewer musicians. Unless a post wants to employ 5-6 dance/party bands as a replacement, there will be a lot more out-of-work musicians.

A friend of mine was in one of those Air National Guard bands. She and her unit were given the option to move over to a local Army band, and many of them took that option. They have to go through Army basic training, but after that they will still be employed as military musicians, playing with the same people they played with before.

It's definitely unfortunate that those bands were eliminated, but the musicians weren't just told "bye!" and forced to try their hand at freelancing.

graybach wrote: ↑Sun Mar 03, 2024 8:00 pm
“… The Director of the Air National Guard, Lieutenant General Michael A. Loh, has announced that all Air National Guard bands will be eliminated next year to enable an increase in cyber warfare capabilities...”

Where all the kooks and traitors are.

Perfect!

Each of those bands had to perform a decommissioning ceremony (any time a unit is deactivated) and was to be musically staffed by the local unit (a brass quintet, in this case). Yes, ANG was asking the units to perform at their own funeral. One unit declined to provide support and it was provided by the DC USAF band (via a quintet).