KEYSTONE HEIGHTS— The Lake Region Kiwanis Community Band played its summer concert to a packed crowd in the Keystone Beach Pavilion on Saturday, June 4.
The hour-long performance featured 14 tunes with a mix of pop and swing including “The Entertainer”, “Five Foot, Two, Eyes of Blue”, “The Bare Necessities” from the “Jungle Book” and Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park.”
Band Director Michael Raftice said the band was first formed eight years ago in response to a series of suicides at Keystone Heights Junior-Senior High School.
Keystone Heights Vice-Mayor Steve Hart proposed a summer band to then-principal Susan Sailor as a way to get students more involved in the community during the summers.
“It ended up being a mix of high school students and adults,” Raftice said of the ensemble, dubbed the Summer in the City Band, “and we did that for two summers.”
After a year off, Hart approached Raftice with the concept of a community band.
“I really was skeptical as to whether it would work,” Raftice recalled. “So instead of asking for a 52-week commitment, we scheduled a fall season and a spring season, and I also said let’s put a rhythm section with it because most big bands are only 19 people, and if you have 10 horns with a rhythm section it still works.”
Raftice said the group has drifted toward swing tunes, songs from the 1970s group Chicago and pop artist Billy Joel.
“We were up to 28 members before the pandemic,” he said, “two years later, we had some members that didn’t come back, one passed away, we’re up to like 18 now. Slowly but surely, it’s building back.”
Band member David Vezzetti started playing clarinet in 1956 in Pennsylvania. His family moved to St. Petersburg, and he eventually earned a master’s degree at the University of Florida.
“I was in military bands, and I played in the St. Augustine Symphony for like 46 years,” he said.
The Palatka resident and 30-year middle school band instructor said he was playing with the Putnam County Community Band when some Lake Region musicians joined the group.
“They invited us to come up here,” Vezzetti recalled. “So, we came up here to play with this group.”
Alto Saxophone player Stephanie Chiappini said she first started playing at age 11 at C.H. Price Middle School in Interlachen.
“I met Steve through a mutual friend, and he invited me here and here I am,” Chiappini said. “I get suckered in every year.”
Chiappini said she is also in a rock-and-roll band called “Easily Distracted.”
Chiappini calls music her therapy.
“I live a busy life,” she said. “I’m a caretaker for the elderly and this is my outlet.”
