BROOKINGS – At 7:30 on a Sunday evening in the Pioneer Park Bandshell, it’s time to “strike up the band!” 

And when the Brookings Area Community Band, under the direction of David Reynolds, starts to play, the entire Ropp family is present among the 100-plus local musicians.

Dad Michael plays tuba; mom Susan and daughter Kate are on trumpets; and son Tom is on French horn. 

Not surprisingly, music plays a big part in their lives; but they are not per se professional musicians. They have played in the community band for five years.

“We always had music in our household,” said Michael Ropp, who graduated from the University of Nebraska with a bachelor’s degree in music. “I played in bands all the way through high school, lots of different pickup bands. I’ve kept doing it ever since.

“Of course we didn’t really have an orchestra in high school like you guys (Kate and Tom) do. The orchestra here is great.”

Michael went on to earn a doctorate in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech. He’s a licensed professional engineer and owns and operates Northern Plains Power Technology, a power engineering consulting firm in Brookings. While engineering is his vocation, music remains his avocation – enhanced perhaps by his family’s assurance that he has “perfect pitch.”    

Susan Ropp met her husband when they were undergrads at U of N, where she majored in music, with a focus on trumpet performance, and biology, which she pursued in post-grad studies. She now works with Michael in the “family business.”

Kate and Tom are twins – and multi-talented. At 16 years old and going into their junior year at Brookings High School, they are also in orchestra and choir. Kate plays violin and sings alto; Tom plays bass and sings bass. They have been in the community band since they were 11 or 12.

Tom wants to major in music and make it his life’s work. “I really, really want to be a studio musician, like to play the movie soundtracks,” he said.

Kate leans more toward the healing arts. “I’ve always loved medicine,” she said. “We have a ridiculous amount of animals at home. I love animals so I’ve always wanted to be a vet, since I was like 3.”

The Ropp menagerie, on the family’s acreage north of Brookings, consists of three horses, about 14 cats (six of them new kittens), two dogs, and two parakeets. 

“We live in a zoo,” Tom said.

“And I have a pet-sitting business,” Kate added. “I board dogs; so I have dogs coming and going. I work at the horse barn; so I’m up at 7 every morning helping with the horses.”

At church a family quartet

The Ropps are unabashed in their praise for community band director and conductor Reynolds, director of the South Dakota State University School of Performing Arts and professor of music. 

Prior to the start of each summer’s concert schedule, he takes a mixed bag of musicians with varying skills and turns them into a synchronized entity that plays well together – and he doesn’t have much time to do it.

“His leadership has a lot to do with it,” Michael said. “He picks music that’s within our skill range. He makes it enjoyable all the time. He knows Karl King and the march composers. He’s got such a deep background.” 

The Ropps’ consensus is that the Sunday evening concert goers really like the marches.

“He always has a neat theme and he makes it fun,” Kate said, of the preparations that go into a concert. “The first two practices are just reading through music. Half of the folder is just pretty much classic music that the band plays every year. And the first two weeks are playing through everything new. And the Monday before the concert, we just run down the concert.”

“He knows how to program a concert,” Susan added.

The Ropps also play together as family. Susan and Kate have been known to play a duet now and then.

“It’s a lot of fun playing the same instrument as mom,” Kate said. “We do a lot of duets together.”

And the family has played together in church. That has proven to be very emotional for Susan.

“The first time we played together as a quartet, I had trouble getting through it,” she said, “because I was going to cry. It was so neat for the family to do.”

“And he’ll write music for us,” Kate added, in reference to her father. “He arranges and composes a lot. It’s really special to play all together.”

That playing “all together” is experienced by other families that like the Ropps have musicians in the community band.

“I think that’s one of the gifts of the community band,” Susan explained. “I know there are a lot of parents that dust their high school instrument off and come and play with their kids.”

“I just enjoy playing up there, with the crowd,” she added. “This community supports the arts so well. And the crowd is just amazing. I just feel like it’s a little piece of Americana. It’s just a neat thing.”

“I’d second that,” Michael said. “I can’t believe how people turn out for these band concerts. That’s great.”

Contact John Kubal at jkubal@brookingsregister.com. 

Courtesy photo: The Brookings Bandshell in Pioneer Park is where the Ropp family, members of the Brookings Area Community Bland, play their brass at the summer concerts on Sunday evenings. From left are: Michael, father, on tuba; Susan, mother, on trumpet; Thomas, son, on French horn; and Kate, daughter, also on trumpet.