Concerts
by the
Bay
Bayview Park, Perth Amboy, NJ
Concerts by the Bay, Inc. is a not-for-profit corporation created for the purpose of providing the financial support needed to continue the professional band concerts which have brightened the summer Sundays of area residents for decades on the Perth Amboy Waterfront. Concerts by the Bay is made up of a group of civic minded citizens dedicated to preserving this more than 60-year-old tradition of free, open air band concerts. Members work diligently and without remuneration to promote this worthy goal.
Concerts by the Bay’s summer season consists of a series of weekly band concerts presented on Sundays throughout the summer at 3:00 P.M. at Bayview Park on Water Street at the foot of Market Street in Perth Amboy.
The concerts are presented by The Garden State Symphonic Band, a thirty-two-piece professional ensemble led by Conductor Virginia Johnston, and previously, for 60 years, by the late Chris Pedersen (Conductor Emeritus). The concerts also feature a vocalist and/or instrumental soloists. Each program presents a potpourri of musical selections, including and representing the Broadway stage, the movies and the concert hall. These are interspersed with marches, ethnic dances and lighter musical fare.
The Garden State Symphonic Band’s goal is to preserve and promote the concert band as a musical entity of the highest musical caliber, as exemplified by the great John Philip Sousa Band of a century ago. Its members are graduates of some of America’s finest music schools, including The Julliard School, Manhattan School of Music, New England Conservatory, Curtis Institute and Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Band members have performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the New Jersey Symphony, the Metropolitan and the New York City Operas, as well as for many of Broadway’s most successful musicals.
Garden State Symphonic Band Website
Virginia Johnston, Music Director and Conductor, received her Bachelor of Music from Syracuse University, her Master of Music from Boston University and she studied choral conducting at Westminster Choir College. She served as Executive Director for The Discovery Orchestra for 13 years and is now the Finance Director as well as the Executive Producer for three of the Orchestra’s award-winning Public Television programs. Virginia has been a professional free-lance clarinetist, conductor and composer in the tri-state area for the past 30 years. She has played clarinet with the Garden State Symphonic Band since 1993, and was appointed Assistant Conductor in 2023 and Conductor in 2025. Other conducting work includes directing the Triad Vocal Ensemble community choir and serving as Associate Conductor of the Maplewood (NJ) Concert Band.