EP Community Band travels far, shares warmth at home

At over 50 years old, the Eden Prairie Community Band is still experiencing new things, including a new rehearsal space and travel to new locations  — while holding fast to beloved traditions.

Among those traditions is this weekend’s “Share the Warmth” Holiday Concert. At the annual event, the band asks that attendees bring donations of warm clothing and nonperishable food for the PROP Shop and PROP Food Shelf instead of paying admission. This year’s concert of holiday favorites will take place on Sunday, Dec. 7, from 2 to 3 p.m. at the Central Middle School (CMS) Performing Arts Center (PAC), 8025 School Road.

Eden Prairie Community Band director Tom Muehlbauer and band members are shown at the 2023 “Share the Warmth” concert. Photo courtesy of Eden Prairie Community Band

Until recently, CMS was also the location of the Eden Prairie Community Band’s rehearsal space. When he first joined, Jeff Mensing said, “We had just been outgrowing the band rooms at CMS and got migrated down to the cafeteria.” Mensing is the current band president and plays trumpet in the band.

While the CMS cafeteria offered the approximately 70-member Community Band more space, Mensing said school activities sometimes conflicted with the band’s evening rehearsals. The band also had to move its instruments and equipment, including music stands, from the band room to the cafeteria and back for each rehearsal. Band members would make the roughly one-sixth-mile trek in five to 10 trips at both the beginning and end of rehearsals.

This past October, middle school conferences conflicted with the band’s Thursday evening rehearsal – meaning they didn’t have access to CMS for the evening. The band occasionally uses local churches as backup rehearsal space, but none of them were available that evening, either. The band ended up using a space at Eden Prairie Schools’ Valley View Campus and, said Mensing, “the stars aligned” to make it the band’s permanent rehearsal space.

The area on the second floor of the building at 11840 Valley View Road faces Bryant Lake and has what Mensing described as a “great view” and good acoustics. “We selfishly wanted a place that we can feel a little bit more permanent. It’s more sustainable and convenient,” Mensing said.

The band’s new rehearsal space, on the second floor of Eden Prairie Schools’ Valley View Campus, will allow them to store equipment such as percussion, music stands, and more without making multiple trips to set up for each rehearsal. Photo by Joanna Werch Takes

It also offers the opportunity for the band to keep some equipment in one place. On the other hand, “We don’t have the luxury of borrowing CMS equipment anymore” to fill gaps, Mensing said. As the Eden Prairie Community Band looks to make the Valley View rehearsal space “feel more like home,” they’ll be looking to acquire donations of additional items for the band itself, particularly percussion equipment.

As a city program funded through the Parks and Recreation Department, the Eden Prairie Community Band’s rehearsal spaces are rented via the City of Eden Prairie. Mensing said there’s a “great relationship” among the band, the city and the school district, with the band appreciating the support of both the city and the schools. 

“Not every city has this kind of program, so we view ourselves as ambassadors for the city, too, whether we’re playing at a Parks and Rec-sponsored event or we’re playing at the Mall of America,” Mensing said.

The full concert band will perform at the Mall of America’s North Atrium on Saturday, Dec. 13, from 10 to 11 a.m., while the Jazz on the Prairie Big Band ensemble will perform in that space on Friday, Dec. 19, from 6 to 7 p.m., as well as on Saturday, Dec. 6, from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. at Eden Prairie Center. See the band’s website for a full list of upcoming performances.

Band ‘ambassadors’ to foreign lands

This past summer, the band’s ambassadorship extended even farther afield: 30 of the band’s musicians, along with 10 “roadies” (family and friends) traveled to the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

“We have a history of traveling,” with the Eden Prairie Community Band, said band member Jody Collis King, a clarinet player who served as lead trip planner for the summer 2025 journey. Previous trips, dating back to 1996, include journeys to Austria, Italy, China, Ireland and Greece.

“We enjoy performing, and some of the band members like traveling, too,” Collis King said. The destination is chosen through a survey of the band members interested in traveling, and the band then works with a music travel company to arrange the trip and performances. “The Baltics is great because it’s someplace a lot of people haven’t been, and it’s very affordable,” Collis King said.

The Eden Prairie Community Band, conducted by Tom Muehlbauer, encourages audience participation at its performances, including one this summer at St. Catherine’s Church in Vilnius, Lithuania. Photo courtesy of Eden Prairie Community Band

The performance spaces Music Celebrations International found for this summer’s trip included the House of the Blackheads in Tallinn, Estonia, a historical venue that relates to Estonia’s version of the Knights of the Round Table; St. Catherine’s Church in Vilnius, Lithuania; the Great Hall of the University of Latvia in Riga; and a former sawmill in Švenčionėliai, Lithuania.

Generally, the band performs outside during the summer, as well as during its international tours, Collis King said. That wasn’t the case for most of the Baltics tour. The concert at the sawmill, however, was originally scheduled to be an outdoor performance. At the last minute, a torrential downpour moved it indoors.

“It was very impromptu, and it ended up being just amazing,” Collis King said. “We were all squished in there together, and we almost blew the roof off the place because everyone got into it so much.”

People in the Baltics, she said, have a deep appreciation for music. “We had the most receptive audiences, I think, of anywhere on any of our tours.”

The band found audiences in the Baltics, including at this performance at the Great Hall of the University of Latvia in Riga, Latvia, to be very appreciative of music. Photo courtesy of Eden Prairie Community Band

The band’s repertoire, under the direction of conductor Tom Muehlbauer, includes a variety of songs. Muehlbauer often introduces a song with a bit of history or context. On its tour of the Baltics, the band played a couple of songs from the region, including an Estonian folk dance tune that had audience members getting up to dance along. 

Also on the playlist were singalong favorites “Sweet Caroline” and “Crocodile Rock.” The latter has special meaning to the Eden Prairie Community Band: it topped the Billboard chart as the number one song in the U.S. in 1973, which was also the same year that the band was founded. When the band plays “Crocodile Rock,” Collis King said, “Tom puts on huge, Elton John-type glasses that flash in color.” 

Since the Baltic states had formerly been behind the Iron Curtain, under Soviet control, the band hadn’t been sure they would recognize such songs. However, the night before the majority of the band arrived in late July, AC/DC performed a concert in Tallinn. While the Eden Prairie band was in Estonia, “half the people we saw were wearing AC/DC concert T-shirts,” Collis King said. “So they do appreciate music of all sorts.”

Before arriving in the Baltics, Collis King said, band members were concerned about the area’s geographical closeness to Ukraine and Russia and the current war between them. “Once we were there, it felt very safe and welcoming everywhere we went,” she said. 

With such travels, Collis King said, “Because we go on foreign trips, it does attract new people to our band.”