Don Cushman
Conductor & Music Director

"...personally I'll miss him a lot." A.J. DeRosa

Jackson Hole News, Wednesday March 20, 2002

Co-founder, director of community band to step down after 13 years.
By Richard Anderson

Believe it or not, not every town has a community band.

Who knows what they do when the Fourth of July or Christmas rolls around, or how their young learn that music is not a class in school but a lifetime pursuit.

Jackson Hole didn't have a community band, not so very long ago. The fact that it does is due in large part to Don Cushman.

For 13 years, Cushman has served as conductor, music director and gentle motivating force behind the Jackson Hole Community Band. He was there at the very beginning—when a dozen or so musicians, many of whom hadn't picked up their instruments in years, decided to give it another try—and he's been there at pretty much every Thursday night rehearsal since.

He'll be there at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Presbyterian Church of Jackson Hole, 1251 South Park Loop Rd., to lead the band in its annual free spring concert. But, after that, he'll be gone.

Cushman is leaving Jackson for a job in Elko, Nev., where he will help create the new California National Historic Trails Interpretive Center.

Cushman, 59, holds bachelor's and master's degrees in music education. He taught music at Indiana Central University in Indianapolis before coming to Jackson in 1983, when he did volunteer work in Grand Teton National Park. He returned as a summer seasonal employee in 1984, worked for the refuge as a sleigh ride interpreter the following year and became a full-time park employee in 1986. In 1995 he switched to an interpretive job with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and today he is assistant manager of the Greater Yellowstone and Jackson Hole Visitor Center on North Cache Drive.

But he also kept up on music over those years, playing trumpet in the pit orchestra for a production of Brigadoon, conducting the orchestra in Fiddler on the Roof, collaborating with Dick Albrecht on an original adaptation of Bizet's Carmen (turning it into a story about used automobile salesmen called Car Men). And along the way he and a few other local chaps formed a brass quintet.

"We thought, 'wouldn't it be neat if we had a band with more players and more repertoire?'" Cushman said.

There were dozens of people in the valley who played; in a short time they had a list of more than 80 they thought might be interested. So, in 1989, the group applied for and received a grant through the Wyoming Centennial Project, purchased some music and started to prepare a Fourth of July program.

It was just a dozen or so players that first year.

"None of us was very good at that point," said A.J. DeRosa, an alto saxophonist in the band who, like many of his fellow musicians, had played as a kid but had hung up his horn through his 20s and 30s until one day he started goofing around with it again. The creation of the community band gave him a place to go and goof with like-minded musicians, to channel his music restlessness and even begin learning again.

"Frankly, some of our early concerts were not very good," DeRosa said. "Don was the driving force at the very beginning, and he has taken this band from a bunch of ragamuffins to a pretty good musical organization."

Gradually the ranks grew to 50 or 60 players ranging in age from early teens to mid 70s. Over the years it came to be taken for granted that the band would perform on the back of a flatbed truck during Old West Days and Fourth of July parades, that it would perform at the opening ceremonies for the Wyoming Special Olympics, the lighting of the Town Square at Christmas time and Old Bill's Fun Run. Its two annual concerts—one in spring and one in fall—have become rites of the seasons.

In 1992, the band played at Jackson Hole Airport for a visit by President George H. W. Bush. In 1999, it was invited to perform in the Maastricht Easter Festival in the Netherlands. Last year, it began to travel to area schools to play concerts and help introduce a new generation to music. The message these visits give to the potential music students, DeRosa said, is, "Look, we were in band and we're still in band and we're still having a good time."

DeRosa credits Cushman for the fun, friends and tremendous progress band members have made.

"Our musical abilities have improved 10-fold," thanks to Cushman's gentle encouragement and patience," DeRosa said. "He's very easygoing. There's no pressure... he never put anyone down, and he's taken us to musical heights I never thought we'd achieve."

DeRosa has been involved with other Jackson musical ensembles, but for whatever reason none have stuck for long. "Don consistently gets 20 to 30 people every week" he said. "That's a tribute to his style, technique and ability to make it fun for all of us."

As music director, Cushman was charged with coordinating venues, working with the band's board of directors and organizing volunteers, not to mention leading rehearsals and selecting music to perform. Several qualified directors are ready to take over when he leaves for Elko in early April. Al Young, the band's first trombonist and the band director at Driggs Middle School, filled in for Cushman last spring when he took a month off to trek around Nepal. Ken Martin, another trombonist from Star Valley, also has conducting experience, and Zack Jakub, a young multi-instrumentalist, has a degree in music education.

"We'll do just fine when Don steps down," DeRosa said, "but personally I'll miss him a lot. He's been a great inspiration for everyone in the band. His style was such that anyone who wanted to play was welcome to play, and consequently their playing skills improved tremendously."

That at least will stay the same.

"If you've got an instrument in your closet you haven't touched in years," DeRosa promised, "you're welcome. If you play terrible all night, at the end everyone will say 'Welcome to the band.'"

(Note: Due to circumstantial changes, Don returned to Jackson Hole in August 2002, and has once again resumed his role as conductor and music director of the Jackson Hole Community Band.)