About Us
The Detroit Concert Band Today
The new Detroit Concert Band was born in 2026 as a Michigan nonprofit corporation — brought to life using the same model that the original ensemble operated for many years.
We perform with 59 professional musicians, all members of the American Federation of Musicians Local 5, in the same per-service model that defined the original band under Leonard B. Smith. Our concerts are free and open to the public. They always have been. That is not incidental to what we do — it is the whole point.
The Detroit Concert Band exists to give every Detroiter access to world-class live music, to preserve the American concert band tradition, and to restore one of the great summer rituals this city has known. No ticket required. No barrier between the music and the people it was made for.
We are a young organization with a very old mission. Our founding board, our musicians, and everyone who has gathered behind this revival believe that Belle Isle is not complete without a band.
The History
In 1946, Leonard B. Smith took the podium of the Detroit Federation of Musicians Band and began one of the most remarkable chapters in American concert band history. What followed was 45 years of summer evenings that Detroiters of a certain generation remember the way others remember a smell or a photograph — vividly, and with something that resembles longing.
Smith was not a typical bandleader. He had served as principal trumpet of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and performed as cornet soloist with Edwin Franko Goldman's legendary band in New York — the gold standard of American concert band performance at the time. He was, by any measure, one of the great virtuosos of his era. And he chose to give the best years of his conducting life to the people of Detroit, on stages in public parks, for free.
At its height, the Detroit Concert Band performed before audiences of 10,000 or more. It recorded 31 LP albums — including, famously, the complete set of all 116 known Sousa marches, a feat matched by no other ensemble at the time. It was recognized nationally as the premier civilian concert band in America. Musicians who played under Smith spoke of the experience as the standard against which everything else was measured.
Smith led the band until 1992. He passed away in 2002.
For decades since, that tradition has been absent from Detroit's cultural life. The Jerome H. Remick Bandshell on Belle Isle — where so much of that history unfolded — stands today as a reminder of what once was, and with the support of the MObig organization, is working toward its own restoration.
The New Detroit Concert Band is not a continuation of Leonard B. Smith's ensemble. We make no claim to that lineage. What we share is a belief in the same mission and the same model — professional musicians, free public performances, and the conviction that great concert band music belongs to everyone. Detroit gave that tradition to the world once. We hope to honor it by building something worthy of that standard.