FOR RELEASE: 4/23/2026
Austin, TX:
The Austin Symphonic Band has gone live with its new searchable Concert Performance Database — an archive going back to the band’s formation in 1981, and currently containing 3,948 performance records. This collection presents decades of musical experience through audio, video and written descriptions, offering fans and researchers a window into the band’s artistic journey.
The database is available online. Alternatively, go to the ASB Homepage and select Concerts; Audio & Video Archives from the pull-down menu.
Comments from ASB’s Music Director:
Dr. Kyle Glaser said:
We are thrilled to announce that the Austin Symphonic Band Concert Performance Database is now available online for all to explore. This milestone would not have been possible without the dedication and vision of ASB Archivist Tim DeFries and Webmaster Richard Davis, whose tireless efforts brought this project to life.
This searchable database serves as a living archive of the Austin Symphonic Band’s rich performance history, offering an invaluable resource for music educators, students and enthusiasts alike. By preserving our past, it also helps inform and inspire the future of our musical community.
ASB Archivist Tim DeFries described the formation of the database:
Webmaster Richard Davis and I created the concert performance database by compiling information and recordings from the Austin Symphonic Band archives. Serious collection of archive materials began in 2002. Before that, the archives was just old posters, concert programs, and hand-written notes in a few bug-infested cardboard boxes stored in a garage. Once ASB members – and even former members – became aware of the archive effort, they supplemented the papers with old cassette and VHS tapes from their personal stashes. To re-discover ASB’s history, I used the papers and recordings to populate a blank spreadsheet with dates, venues, conductors, pieces, and composers. In 2013, I was fortunate to rescue the original digital master tapes for all 1986 to 1997 concerts from disposal. Around this core set, over the years we built up the collection to its present 2000 digital audio and 500 video recordings, which cover three-quarters of ASB’s 900-piece concert-band repertoire.
ASB Webmaster Richard Davis describes how the concert database functions:
The ASB website operates within Squarespace, which has no built‑in database. Thus, we use Google Sheets as the data source, accessed through a Google Apps Script. All of the searching, filtering, and sorting happens in the visitor's browser using JavaScript injected into a Squarespace code block, rather than on a server. Every time someone visits the page, their browser downloads the data and does the work of finding matches. The actual audio and video recording files were uploaded individually to Squarespace's asset library, where each one gets assigned a URL that is then stored in the Google Sheet alongside the concert information — so the database knows where to find each file when a visitor wants to play it. This is a practical workaround that makes Squarespace behave like it has a real database, but it's held together by several moving parts — the spreadsheet, the Apps Script endpoint, and the custom JavaScript. The concert database files comprise 135 MB in Google Sheets.
ASB President Dr. Craig Boyle reflected on the value of the database:
A collection of more than 40 years of music from the Austin Symphonic Band is an historic accomplishment. It will serve educators and students, musicians and music lovers, and communities around the world. Bringing the joys of a community band has been ASB's mission for nearly half a century.