MARKING TWO MILESTONES: The Sunday, May 18 concert by the Blawenburg Band, at Kendall Hall on the campus of The College of New Jersey, celebrates the ensemble’s 135th birthday and conductor Jerry Rife’s 40th year on the podium.
By Anne Levin
One day back in 1890, a big box of musical instruments arrived at the post office at Route 518 and the Great Road. The box was opened and the instruments were doled out to a group of fledging musicians, who went behind the building and learned how to play.
“That’s how the story goes,” said Jerry Rife, music director and conductor of The Blawenburg Band, comparing it to a scene right out of The Music Man. “We started on the second floor of the old blacksmith shop on Route 518. When we got too big, we moved to the Blawenburg Church across the street.” more
On the night of October 15, 1956, viewers of I Love Lucy, the nation’s most popular television show, saw Lucille Ball and Orson Welles doing a scene from Romeo and Juliet. Welles has his doubts, but she’s been showering him with compliments, telling him he’s better than John Gielgud, Maurice Evans, Sir Ralph Richardson, and, after he prompts her, Laurence Olivier. Looking like an adult parody of her Peanuts namesake, Lucy delivers her jawbreaker of a line with outstretched arms, “What man art thou that, thus bescreened in night, so stumblest on my counsel?”
