World Photo by Lou Sennick The Oregon Coast Lab Band performs Friday evening on the Coos Bay Boardwalk under the direction of Stacy Tate. Mike Turner, who teaches at Southwestern Oregon Community College, has been named the new musical director for the Lab Band group.

COOS BAY - When Stacy Tate first performed with the Lab Band Program Association, he was blowing on his alto saxophone. That was several years ago.

The Marshfield graduate had a somewhat different experience Friday night as the group performed at Coos Bay’s Christmas tree-lighting ceremony.

He was directing.

“Stepping in front of a crowd as a conductor is definitely a challenge and definitely exciting,” he said, while his charges took a break to rest their chops before going into another round of Christmas carols.

Tate volunteered to help out after the group’s founder and longtime music director resigned this past summer.

“When they needed a musical director, I said I was available,” Tate said.

He isn’t the only one who stepped forward to lend a hand.

Mike Turner, head of Southwestern Oregon Community College’s music department, agreed to direct the organization’s advanced group, Evolution, as well as serve as the musical director. Tate leads the Lab Band’s junior and senior ensembles. Neither man is being paid.

“He’s very talented musically,” Tate said of Turner. “Lab Band is lucky to have him.”

Turner served as an interim director following former director Greg Young’s resignation in August. It was Turner’s handling of the group at the Medford Jazz Jubilee that helped convince the Lab Band’s directors to have him take over the group, said Ray Sanford, the group’s president.

“We felt like he had the most to offer, and he helped us out right from the start,” he said.

Turner initially got involved with the youth band last spring, at the end of his first year at Southwestern, when he arranged for students in Evolution to get college credit.

“I didn’t want to see that fail,” he said.

Then, when he took over as an interim director, the students told him they wanted him to stay on.

“I said, ‘OK, I’m going to do it for you guys,’” Turner said. “I really wanted the kids to have this program.”

Turner has agreed to lead the Lab Band for a year, to see if he can juggle his work at the college with the youth group demands.

“Directing Lab Band, it’s almost a full-time job, too,” he said.

That’s why he’s glad to have Tate in the fold, as well as two band members, Gary LeBrun and Jolene Slagle, who serve as assistant student directors. They will get to conduct a few numbers at a concert Tuesday at Southwestern, Turner said.

“It’s important to have someone else helping with the kids, to have a mix of people working with them,” he said.

Sanford said getting Tate to come back also is in keeping with the group’s slogan: Passing it on.

“It’s about passing on the idea of Big Band music from one generation to the next,” he said. “And Stacy is very good at teaching the basics of music training.”

Tate has been playing music for 13 years, and conducting for about the past two or three, he said.

“I’m a music education major, so I like having the opportunity to learn how to teach and how to learn with students,” Tate said.

As for Turner, who has taught in Oregon colleges for much of the past two decades, he understood he would have a challenge replacing a director who many of the students had played under for years.

“I’ve been very careful not to be the previous director,” he said. “My primary concern was that they wanted to continue to play good music.”

Sanford said a few members have left the group following Young’s departure, though not many. He said Evolution lost two of its 22 members, but both were coming up from Bandon, so travel expenses may have played a role. He also noted that there have been some kids joining the beginning band since Young’s departure.

“We want that trend to continue,” Turner said.