Conductor Celebrates 45 Years Leading Wheaton Municipal Band
WHEATON, IL — In 1979, Dr. Bruce Moss, who was not even Dr. Bruce Moss yet, got a phone call to fill in as conductor for Wheaton Municipal Band. Now, he’s set to celebrate 45 years conducting the 80-piece symphonic orchestra with a special concert Saturday that features two of his former students.
Moss, then in his 20s, had been working as the band director at York High School in Elmhurst when he got that fateful call.
“I thought I would do it for a few years, but now 45 years later it’s still going,” he told Patch.
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Perhaps Moss can owe his entire career to such unexpected happenstances. He says it was “on a fluke” that he joined band class in sixth grade.
“One of my buddies talked me into going to band class,” Moss said. “I probably never would have.”
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He said, “I fell in love with the sounds and being a part of it.”
As he continued into high school, Moss originally planned to be a teacher. “That was in my bones,” he told Patch.
Moss had done so well playing trumpet in the school band that he “decided to try out music” when he went off to college at University of Illinois.
He later graduated with two degrees in music, which ultimately led to him earning his doctorate degree in 1989.
Moss became band director at Bowling Green State University in Ohio in 1994, so for the past 30 years, he’s commuted to Illinois every summer to lead the Wheaton Municipal Band.
He told Patch he flew at first, but now he drives in on Wednesdays for rehearsals, stays for the band’s Thursday performances and then drives back to Ohio on Friday mornings.
He’ll stay a little longer this weekend to celebrate his 45th anniversary celebration at Wheaton College’s Edman Chapel on Saturday, July 27.
Joining the celebration will be two of Moss’s former students: U.S. Marine Corps Band Director Lt. Col. Ryan Nowlin and John Hagstrom, who plays trumpet in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO).
Moss praised Nowlin and Hagstrom for their hard work, adding, “We’re very gifted and blessed to have all the students we’ve taught.
After this season, Moss says he is “planning to come back to Wheaton next summer for year 46 and we’ll just go from there.”
In his 45-year tenure, Moss has seen Wheaton Municipal Band gain and lose performers. He’s led the band in a concert at Grant Park, which he says was a rare time they “ventured out of Wheaton.”
Over the past four and a half decades, they’ve hosted special guests and soloists from the CSO, along with members of the U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Bands. They’ve been invited multiple times to perform at the Midwest International Band and Orchestra, an honor Moss said is rare.
There are even three musicians who’ve been with the Wheaton Municipal Band longer than Moss: 60-year veteran Al Loek, 50-year veteran Michael Thorson and 40-year veteran Carol Kierzyk.
“The group is extremely successful on a national level and the reason is that there are several factors,” Moss told Patch.
He said these include the skill of the musicians, the support of the City of Wheaton and the Friends of the Wheaton Municipal Band, the city’s park district and the band’s “extremely uncommon, enthusiastic audience base.”
“Thousands of people come over the course of the summer to hear them,” Moss said.
Evoking the collaborative spirit of a man who has led an 80-piece band of musicians for 45 years, Moss said, “All of these factions play together to make it a success.”
Click the link to learn more about Wheaton Municipal Band and the Anniversary Celebration Concert.
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