By Jaime Alfaro

Alex Strachan stands before an ensemble of 10 woodwind and brass musicians, his baton moving rhythmically through space as he conducts an outpour of musical notes. The various instruments are coming together to produce a bouncy melody, instantly identifiable as the Addams Family theme song.

The band is sight-reading the score for the first time, and they play the famous triplet of notes capped by a quarter note and, in unison, snap their fingers after the silent beat: dududuDAH *snap snap*!

The ensemble is a group of local, volunteer musicians who have come together at Alex and Nina Strachan’s garage in the Outer Sunset to rehearse for its October gig on at the Sunset District’s Fourth Annual Great Hauntway festival celebrating Halloween.

District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio sent out a supervisor newsletter earlier this summer calling for the formation of a new marching band, for Sunset and San Francisco residents of all ages and experience levels, called the Sunset Community Band.

“It’s amazing what happens when you put an idea into the universe,” Engardio said. “I never expected our first-ever Sunset Night Market would bring 10,000 people to Irving Street. When that happened, I thought we also needed a Sunset Community Band to play at special events to celebrate everything that makes the Sunset so great.”

The band’s inaugural concert was in Oceanside’s Fourth of July parade, and they are seeing significant growth.

“Celebrate every gig!” was a refrain expressed by Alex Strachan, the Sunset Community Band’s conductor and volunteer leader/organizer along with co-leaders/founders Nina Strachan and arts school teacher Allyson Ward. The band gets together every Tuesday evening for practice. The band played at the Italian Heritage Festival on Oct. 13, where they represented the Sunset Community at Washington Square Park.

The couple, who have called San Francisco home for the past 10 years, spoke about the band’s beginnings, and its future.

“We’re able to get gigs easily,” said Alex, an engineer and horn player and musician since the age of 4. He returned to community music since moving to the Bay Area a decade ago, and also serves as principal horn and assistant conductor for the Oakland Civic Orchestra. He attributes the band’s booking power to the fact that it can function as a concert and marching ensemble.

“We’re able to play outside,” he says, whereas other bands require a lot of infrastructure and set-up to land and play gigs.

Nina, who has lived in the neighborhood for six years, has played in bands since childhood and college, and plays the flute and saxophone for the band. For Nina, the Sunset Community Band has offered a great way to get to know her community in more depth.

Nina and Alex are first-time parents to a gregarious 7-month-old, and they have met community members and other young parents through the band. Sourdough bread exchanges, helping with another community member’s baby and creating inside jokes with folks she’s met through the band, Nina said, are examples of how the Sunset Community Band has added a much more substantial layer of connection between her and her community, beyond a superficial hello.

There is also no language barrier, because the gatherings are held together by the language of music, Nina said. Refreshments and snacks are available at rehearsals.

In the garage, some of the band members chatted about movies, others talking shop on the nuts and bolts of tempo, and about witches so scary they can make a person lose his or her lunch. Other members remained more to themselves, choosing to express themselves primarily through their instruments.

Nina acknowledges there is a lot of work that goes into administering a band. On the back end, it can be hard booking rehearsal spaces, Nina explained. That is a major barrier for a lot of people who might otherwise want to pick up an instrument they used to play in school.

Many adults have lost the spaces they used to go to where they could nourish their talents, connect with others, and serve their community. Creating that space for rehearsals is key in getting the neighborhood to come together, break bread, and bring joy to their community, Nina said.

The new band was envisioned by Engardio as a way to stimulate a sense of neighborhood pride and joy in the Sunset District. Allyson Ward, who coaches horn at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, and who, like many members of the band, has wanted to keep organized music as part of her adult life, says that although she comes from a more formal orchestra background, she wants people to know that the band is open to all.

“It’s OK to have hobbies,” said Ward, who plays horn for the Sunset Community Band. She said of the band, they are “grown adults with different pathways in their lives. You don’t have to be the best.”

“The goal is to make this an all-ages band where Sunset students who play in their school bands can join and get mentorship from experienced musicians,” Engardio said. “Currently, the members range in age from 30s to 70s. The older folks can find purpose in being part of something popular while passing along advice to the younger generation.”

The band is currently comprised of 13-14 regular members, with a total of about 16.

For Cambria Gersten, a P.E. teacher at Lowell High School, bringing out her bass clarinet after 22 years offered a way to rekindle a love affair with music.

“Playing with others is really wholesome and fun,” she said. “I realized I missed that.”

Gersten mentioned that she has been spotted by some of her students carrying her clarinet case, and that some of them were surprised by seeing another side of her beyond athletics.

“It’s kind of fun,” she said. “The multi-layers of human beings.”

Brian Hueng, who played tuba for the Cal marching band, has found an alumni ensemble in the East Bay, but is happy to get to know other musicians in his neighborhood in the Sunset.

“It’s nice to play where my family, my kids, can see,” Hueng said.

Others are looking for a way to recharge. Telly Cheung – a flutist for the band who played the instrument in high school and who currently works as a pediatrician – says the band gives him some breathing room “away from work, where I don’t have to think too much and just play with others.”

The band is currently recruiting for more band members, musicians of all ages who play woodwinds, percussion and strings. The band is both a seated band (wind band or orchestra), and a marching band that can play concerts at special parade events.

The Sunset Community Band is also seeking non-playing volunteers to help out with marketing, fundraising and administration, design and choreography.

Engardio believes there is a kind of renaissance in store for the Sunset District, where he says there’s a unique energy:

“The return of the L streetcar, the number of innovative small businesses choosing to open up in the Sunset, the energy of our Sunset Chinese Cultural District, our night markets and Sunday farmer’s market and the destination restaurants with lines out the door are all examples of potential being unleashed in the Sunset post-pandemic, even when areas like downtown continue to struggle,” Engardio said.

“The Sunset Community band will be there to celebrate the joy that exists in the Sunset as we work to create more of it,” he added.

To learn more, go to sunsetcommunityband.com.