My Story: Rufus Patrick
Mr. Music of Hinesburg talks about his family heritage of playing in bands that led him to start the Hinesburg Community Band in 1996. A 30th Anniversary concert is upcoming May 10 at 4 p.m. at CVU.
(Editor’s note: The interview, transcript and audio production were accomplished by The Record’s intern, Sofia Grappo, who graduates this year from UVM and will soon start work in marketing in New York City. The older photos are in the order that Rufus discusses them. As the text below is a transcript (with a few minor changes), it is here for those who like to read while listening. But this is designed as an audio story with the storyteller’s voice, so click the ‘article voiceover’ above and have a listen.)
I’m Rufus Patrick. I taught for many years, and now I’m basically doing the same thing with big people. I’m conducting the Hinesburg town band, or now it’s the Hinesburg Community Band. The South County Chorus, the United Church of Hinesburg choir, and I also do the Wake Robin Chorus. Which is a lot of fun too with the seniors. I always thought that. You know, musicians are also artists, and we called it the Artist Series because we would have a guest artist. It started in 1997, I think. I didn’t know it would progress to where we are now. Because the Hinesburg Artist Series encompasses the band and the chorus. We’re now 501(c)(3) and we have a board. I used to do all that stuff myself. I used to do the programs and put the ads in. And now I just have to wave my arms.
My grandmother’s neighbors, she played the organ and he played the violin, and they were here one day when I was a young kid. And I said to my mom, ‘I want to learn the violin,’ so she got me lessons. I started teaching at Lamoille Union High School and then I went to Burlington where I graduated from high school anyway.
In 1996, somebody said to me, ‘We need more music in the Fourth of July parade.’ And so I just started making phone calls, and I got a bunch of people together, and we rode the flatbed in the parade. And then people started saying they wanted to play more, and so we did. We did a concert in the park every year, and early on we had some supporters like the Wainer family – and it’s called Wainer Community Park, down behind the school, and they gave us some, you know, sponsorship.
I have people coming from St. Albans to play in this band, and they all have fun. They’re very talented. And I used to just recruit, I still recruit, constantly, but now I have some of my own band members who will play a gig and they say, ‘Hey, I just played this with the Philharmonic and this horn player subbed for somebody and she’s really good. You should give her a call.’ It’s been a really nice transition, and it’s a rocking group right now.
This first picture is from 1907 and you know, there’s a lot of you know, Hinesburger names in here, like the Murrays and the Patricks and the Dows and the Meads and the Pages; they’re all Hinesburg families. And it was a big deal for them to go to play on the Ticonderoga on the water. Imagine 1907.
And that picture is one of the reasons we staged this picture with the flagpole behind us like this when we got to play in 1998 [on the front of the Ticonderoga now part of Shelburne Museum]. It was really fun. And it was only a couple years after we had started playing in the parades.
This photo was found somewhere in town. In the files somewhere. Don’t know what year it was from. When we commissioned a piece for the band, we made [the photo] a big deal [and put it in the program]. The Hinesburg March, the Spirit of Hinesburg March. I commissioned a friend of mine who’s a composer. He wrote a little bit about the band. About my grandfather, my namesake, playing the bass drum and the concert for that year. This was the picture that was on the front of the program.
We’re doing a Mother’s Day concert on May 10th at CVU, 4 o’clock. The South County Chorus is my other group, and we’re doing a really fun program with them. And the band is again playing some stuff. We’re trying to lock into the 30th year of the band since I started it; the 250th anniversary [of the U.S.] and I guess this is Vermont’s 235th.
I’ve got two high school students whose aunt plays in the band, so we have people that are 80 and people that are 18. That’s what music’s all about. It’s good for all ages.
I did sort of peel through one of the old books [of music] that we found [in the attic]. It was in pretty tough shape, but it had a lot of the classics and some of them, of course, were written by people like [John Philip] Sousa. He wrote so many marches that we’ve never played. And we’re doing one this year . . . the Invincible Eagle – we’ve never done it before. And it’s a great march.
My summer programs. I totally change them because it’s more fun to play new stuff. The only thing, we always end with the Stars and Stripes Forever, because it’s one of the Sousa marches that everybody knows and likes. And it’s a really fun way to kick the concert in the butt, finish it off. Other than that. I pretty much program a new concert for every summer program.
And that’s cool. I feel like I’m hanging out in my correct place with all my ancestors.
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Hinesburg's very own Music Man is a gift. Thank you, Rufus.
This is great, Rufus! And OMG, once upon a time I had brown hair.