BRATTLEBORO — It's tough to say goodbye to something you have helped to create and build for nearly a quarter-century.
That's a big reason why Bruce Corwin's decision to step down as director of the Brattleboro American Legion Band is not so much a goodbye as it is scaling back of his duties.
“I'll still be around,” he said on May 14, in an interview just before the band's annual spring concert at the Post 5 Legion home on Linden Street. “I'll just be sitting in the back with a trombone.”
Corwin, 80, announced his plans to band members in January when they gathered to start rehearsals for this coming year's concerts. But Corwin has been sharing the baton with Ray Brown, the band's new director, for several years now.
The Legion Band started in 1990 with about 35 members and $10,000 of seed money from Post 5. Ever since, they have become fixtures at local parades, Memorial Day services, and summer outdoor concerts around the area.
Corwin is quick to credit the band members and the support of Post 5 and the community in helping make the band a musical institution in Brattleboro. But band members are quick to say how much they love playing for Corwin, and the difference his leadership has made.
Born to the job
Music has been a big part of Corwin's life since he was a child in Bellows Falls.
“My mother always said that when I was little, I used to stand in front of the radio and bang on a pot keeping time with the music,” he explains.
He says he started out taking piano lessons, but his music teacher, Frank Bush, talked his mother into switching him to the trombone.
“He said I was built for the trombone,” Corwin says. And as this was the 1940s, and trombone players such as Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller were leading chart-topping bands, Corwin said it didn't take too much convincing to get him to switch instruments.
“That first trombone cost $90, and I paid it off myself,” he says. “It was easy to pick up after starting out on the piano.”
He soon after started playing with the Grafton Cornet Band, a group he still plays with seven decades later.
The University of Maine graduate spent his adult life as a music instructor - first in Bennington as a vocal teacher, and then for 38 years as an elementary music teacher in the Brattleboro schools.
He kept up with his trombone playing along the way, with both the Grafton band and the Chester Brass Band, and has helped organize the annual TubaChristmas concerts in Brattleboro.
With this kind of background, the opportunity to lead the Legion band was difficult for Corwin to pass up.
'Why not?'
In the summer of 1990, Corwin led the Chester Brass at a performance at the Post 5 home at the annual reunion of the 104th Regimental Band. The Post 5 members enjoyed the performance and several of them asked Corwin if he'd be interested in starting up a band in Brattleboro.
“Why not?” was Corwin's response.
He offered to take the directorship of the Brattleboro American Legion Band on a temporary basis, but stayed on well beyond the start-up stage. They performed in concerts and parade all over New England, and started competing in national American Legion band contests. In 2002, they took fourth in its first-ever national competition and finished second three years later in Salt Lake City.
But Corwin says the trophies and the recognition are not as important as the relationships he has formed with the band members over the years.
There are a few members who have had experience in military bands, but most are like Corwin - people who haven't served in the armed forces but who have lifelong love for brass bands.
“They're all good musicians, and good friends,” he says. “We're the best Legion band in Vermont. Then again, we're also the only Legion band in Vermont.”
Honors for a friend
The Post 5 banquet hall was packed for the spring concert, as much to see the band as to celebrate Corwin's long career.
After their first two numbers, Brown and band manager Bill Wessel led a brief tribute.
Wessel read a Vermont House proclamation drafted by the Brattleboro delegation of Mollie Burke, Valerie Stuart, and Tristan Toleno that saluted Corwin for his service.
Brown announced that Post 5 and the band was creating a new annual award, the Bruce Corwin Above and Beyond Award, which would be given to the band member who went above and beyond what was expected of them.
“This is kind of overwhelming,” said Corwin after the ovation died down. “It's been an honor to have directed the band, and it's an honor to continue to play in it. Ray, the hot seat is all yours!”
But not quite. Brown arranged for Corwin to have one more turn with the baton to lead the “Our Director March” by F.E. Bigelow, an impromptu addition to the night's program.
He basked in the glow of another ovation, and then the first-ever director emeritus of the Brattleboro American Legion Band went back to his seat in the trombone section, smiling.