By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
When Bruce Corrigan steps onto the podium to conduct the Symphonic Band for the Bowling Green High School spring band concert, he will be one step closer to the end of a 37-year teaching career.
[RELATED: Spotlight will be on soloists when BGHS bands perform May 9]
Corrigan, who has been teaching music in Bowling Green for 33 years , the last 10 as director of bands, will retire at the end of the school year.
So, what does retirement look like?
Well, travel with family, of course. Though he never lived there he has family ties to his parents’ native New Hampshire where there are mountains to climb.
He’ll continue to perform with the Bowling Green Area Community Band.
And there are compositions to write.
And, he said, there are young band directors to mentor.
And, maybe, further along, there are high school math classes that need a substitute teacher.
If that’s not enough, the percussionist has just acquired a saxophone he’ll be practicing.
“I’ve loved all the things I’ve done,” Corrigan said. “There are things I’d like to do after I retired that I haven’t found time to do.”
“It wasn’t an easy decision for me.” He’ll see a great class of senior graduate, but then he said he has a great class of juniors. In fact, he has great classes going all the way down to sixth grade.
He has great memories of trips, contests, and performances, including some that didn’t go as planned.
Now, at 61, he’s decided to move onto the next stage of life.
Born in Florida where his father was an engineer working for NASA, and raised in Indianapolis, Corrigan’s music career started inauspiciously.
His parents, he said, wanted their five children – Corrigan is the youngest – to have music in their lives. Growing up in northwestern New Hampshire on the Connecticut River, they didn’t have that opportunity. So, all their children played instruments.
Corrigan started out on accordion, but when it came time to join school band his mother was told that he couldn’t play that instrument. Following his older brother’s footsteps, he took up percussion.
He loved math, Corrigan said. “Part of me wanted to be an engineer,” like his father, who worked for Pratt & Whitney.
Then as a sophomore in high school, a music teacher introduced him to musical forms and structures he’d not encountered before. “When I heard Bach fugues, I went home and told my parents I wanted to go into music.”
He didn’t know if he wanted to focus on performance or music education.
He ended up going to the University of Indiana to study music education. He taught in Indiana for four years before returning to the university to get a master’s in percussion performance. Being a performance major gave him more access to the band directors at the university’s esteemed school of music.
On earning his master’s, he made a decision that surprised those mentors. He wanted to teach middle school. “My true love has been teaching the beginners,” Corrigan said.
When he began his job search, there were not many openings for middle school band teachers. He ended up applying in Bowling Green.
He knew about BG because in high school, then BGSU director of bands, Mark Kelly, conducted the all-state ensemble he was in. Kelly was a friend of several of the band directors Corrigan studied with in Indiana.
So, in 1990, he interviewed with Thom Headley, then BGCS director of bands. “I liked what he had set up here.”
The district then had four band directors who would start the day at the high school before heading off to other schools. Several years later Corrigan was assigned to be junior high band director after budget cuts forced staff reductions.
In his time here he has taught all grades of band, as well as general music, creative music, jazz, and conducted the orchestra for a year.
Jazz is close to his heart. In Indiana, he studied with performer and legendary jazz educator David Baker – “he made us fly.”
Yet when he started teaching his jazz class, he felt he still had a lot to learn. The jazz courses at Indiana were not geared toward teachers, but to those intent on professional careers.
His class taught history but also encouraged the young musicians to improvise.
Whether in high school or junior high, he also made sure all the musicians had a chance to ad lib.
Just in the last few years, Jazz Cats alumni have moved on to study the music. Guitarist Cameron Brosius and saxophonist Allan Landgraf went to BGSU. Simon Metzger is studying with famed drummer Peter Erskine at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. Joey Craig is studying at the University of North Texas.
Corrigan said he was proud that when adjudicators at a jazz festival were asked to pick the top soloists from participating ensembles, they said that five musicians in the BG band were outstanding.
Corrigan has handed the reins of the Jazz Cats over to Jennifer Metzger. He made suggestions to her, he said, but she’s taken the band further.
After retiring, Corrigan wants to pay tribute to a former professor Fred Ebbs, who had planned to spend his retirement working with young band directors. He died of cancer before he could accomplish that, so Corrigan wants to pick up the baton. He’s still working out the details.
Also, though he’s traveled to New England before, he and his wife, Julie, have never been there to see the leaves change in fall. He has a cousin who loves to hike, and Corrigan plans to join him exploring some of the mountains in New Hampshire.
Of course, the father of three grown children, is looking forward to spending time with them and his two grandchildren.
While he has composed music before, he wants to pursue it more seriously. The composing he wants to do is, not surprisingly, going to be for young band musicians.
