Two local band directors and music educators will march in the Rose Parade in Pasadena, California, Thursday, Jan. 1.
Michelle Fritts, the director of the Cooperstown Community Band, will be marching New Year’s Day with another local band director, Paul Blake.
Before having twin sons, Fritts was the band director at Edmeston Central School District from 2011 to 2023. She will be marching with the Band Directors Marching Band, which is part of the Michael D. Sewell Memorial Foundation’s project called Saluting America’s Band Directors. Fritts marched in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2023 and the Rose Parade in 2022.
The first time she marched in Pasadena, Fritts said, she was in a “marching mode” focusing largely on playing the notes and “staying in line.” At Macy’s, she said she got to enjoy the crowd more.
“It was cool to see people acknowledge music educators, and it’s such an important profession,” Fritts said. “We would like to think that everyone has a special music educator or educators in their life, and that was part of the premise behind the foundation forming this project to salute America’s band directors with the theme of ‘we teach music, we teach life.’”
A band director that Fritts said inspired her, growing up in Franklin and throughout her entire band career, was Carol Barker. She added that she grew up in a “ridiculously musical household,” and her parents met in a community marching band.
Having grown up playing the clarinet, she graduated from Franklin Central School and received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music education at the College of St. Rose. She taught in the Cherry Valley-Springfield Central School District for five years before landing at Edmeston.
“It’s one of those things when you are in junior high and everybody asks you what you want to do, that was always my answer,” Fritts said. “I never had another choice. It’s exciting that I get to do that, and I will return to the classroom when the boys get a little older.”
As a band director, Fritts has dabbled in every instrument, but she said she also enjoys the other woodwind instruments like the baritone saxophone and the contrabass clarinet.
Fritts said her mother played the clarinet, and when she chose her instrument in fourth grade, her babysitter played the clarinet. She added that her band director played the clarinet as well, saying “for a small town, I had a beautiful music education.”
Going from teaching to directing the community band was less of a “transition” and “more of an adjustment,” Fritts said.
“I did take a year off when the boys were first born, and it was nice to come back to making music with others,” she said.
While her kids will not be attending the parade, as they are 2-and-a-half-years old, Fritts said they love concert band music. She said her sister and her children, who are almost 7 years old, will be going, and she is “excited to share this with them.”
Blake, who plays trombone, works as the band director at Richfield Springs Central School and is an adjunct low brass instructor at Hartwick College and SUNY Oneonta.
He said he began playing trombone in sixth grade. He had started playing violin, but he switched schools to one where there was not a strings program. When his band director asked what he wanted to play, he told him whatever instrument you wish you had but you don’t, which was the trombone. Blake graduated from Waverly Junior and Senior High School in Waverly, New York, in 1985.
Blake began teaching in 2001 at Oneonta Middle School, but has been in Richfield Springs for the past 21 years. He said he loves kids and music, and as he has evolved in the profession, he has recognized the impact of the “mentoring process” and “being a role model” in his students’ lives through the art form.
A music educator he said impacted him a lot growing up was Dwayne Klinko, whom he said he recently reconnected with after 30 years.
“All the influence as far as making relationships with kids is due to him,” Blake said.
This will be his first Rose Parade, and Blake said Fritts recommended the opportunity to him.
As a kid, Blake said he was forced to watch the parade with his parents and grandparents, but it became a family tradition.
“I made all of my kids watch it too, so it will just be really neat to actually participate in it,” Blake said. “I teach in a pretty small school, so I would never have an opportunity to march my high school band there. We are just too small. It’s a really huge honor.”
Going back to the Rose Parade this year, Fritts said she is most excited to “pay attention to all of the things I missed the first time.”
“They told us when we make the turn onto Colorado Boulevard and look down the street, to look down the street, to see the people who are everywhere and the mountains,” Fritts said. “I may have forgotten to look down the street because I was so focused on playing the right notes and staying in line. So I am looking forward to looking down the street.”