A great honor: Leicester, Leominster, Marlborough band directors part of Macy’s Parade

When the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade marches through the streets of New York City on its 2 ½-mile path, three faces among the thousands will be very familiar to local music students.

Three band directors, from public schools in Leicester, Leominster and Marlborough, will be part of a 400-person marching band with their wind instruments.

Leicester Middle School’s band director Kristina Looney will play the trumpet, Leominster High School’s marching band director Robert Bergeron will play the tuba and Marlborough High School’s band director Angie Crockwell will play alto saxophone.

In an interview inside the music room at Leicester Middle School, the Massachusetts trio said getting to be part of the band was an honor that makes them feel like kids again.

“It's just the coolest thing,” said Looney, 34. “I can tell people are as excited as I am because it's just something that's so well known and so big.” 

The three were picked by an Ohio-based project called Saluting America’s Band Directors, which is run by the Michael D. Sewell Memorial Foundation, an organization created in 2017 by the family of its namesake who was a high school band director for 34 years.

While Crockwell and Bergeron have participated in other parades as members of the foundation in previous years, Looney joined only recently, applying but without high hopes.

Looney is a Leicester native herself, starting out on the trumpet as early as 10 years old, playing all throughout middle school, high school and later in college at the University of New Hampshire, where she majored in music and played in the school’s band.

Looney can also be seen in a 2010 film called "Furry Vengeance" playing in a marching band as a movie extra.

But as life complicated things with her two toddlers and busy at work as Leicester Middle School’s only music teacher, she said this was a way for her to get back to what music is about in the first place — the joy of playing.

“I hardly ever play anymore,” said Looney.

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is tied for the second longest-running parade in the country, being held for the first time in 1924 on the same year as America's Thanksgiving Parade, which is held in Detroit.

The parade in Philadelphia, now called 6abc Dunkin' Donuts Thanksgiving Day Parade, precedes the other two by four years.

At a pace of around 4 miles per hour, the parade will trot through the city starting at 9:30 a.m., with the 400-member band, among whom will be Looney, Bergeron and Crockwell, among the front pieces of the parade.

This year will be the parade’s 97th installment, cancelled only during World War II, while it was held at a much, much smaller scale in 2020.

In addition to the 400-member band, the parade will also feature 18 musicians, among them Cher, 25 balloons, 31 floats, among other acts.

For Bergeron, the 29-year-old tuba player who has taught marching band music at Leominster High School for the last five years, Macy’s Parade will be his second, first marching in 2013 with his college marching band at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he was studying music.

Then he was just 19.

“I have this memory, and this is kind of why I teach music,” said Bergeron. “My dad passed away when I was 11 years old in the middle of December and I remember watching the Macy's Parade with him on our last Thanksgiving.

“Then he told me he was going to watch me in the Macy's Parade someday.

“I made it my life dream at that point to then be in the Macy's Parade and now I'm doing it twice.”

For Crockwell, a versatile musician with 26 years of teaching experience and a list of instruments she can play longer than she can fit in a single breath, the parade will be a high note that she says matches the Rose Parade, an event held on New Year’s Day in Pasadena, California, where she played in 2022 alongside Bergeron.

During her long career in teaching, Crockwell has taught orchestra, guitar and piano at Marlborough High School for seven years, while before that she spent 15 years teaching at Grafton Elementary School.

Following her parents’ suggestion, music was never in her early plans, earning a degree in sociology from UMass Amherst, which she said played a great role in her juggling the different personalities in the bands she directs as a teacher.   

Although low-key in comparison to her major, she pursued music as a minor and later earned a certificate from a university in Ohio.

A native of Queens, New York, who held a lot of memories from her years as a child, this parade will be an accomplishment four decades in the making.

“I remember going to the Macy's Parade when I was 8 and I just remember saying, ‘Whoa, look at all these balloons. I wish I was in the parade.’

“Well, here we are.”

The three said that there’s a lot of preparation that goes into the parade, especially with a performance Monday at Ground Zero where they will play "Amazing Grace" and the "Star-Spangled Banner."

In the typical red uniforms — for which they had to send the measurements for way ahead of time — the three will spend a lot of time practicing with the rest of the 400 band directors, possibly on the grounds of a local high school in New York City or New Jersey.

The trio said that some of the music titles, which they’ve already started to practice, are “76 Trombones,” the signature piece from the 1957 musical "The Music Man" that has become a marching band standard, and an Americana medley by John Philip Sousa, an early 20th-century composer whose music is well known among marching band circles.

Looney recalled her elementary school teacher in Leicester, Ann Emond, who first taught her how to play “76 Trombones.”

“I have been thinking of her a lot because she taught me that girls could do anything, that music is a lifelong activity," said Looney.

Although the trio will be spending Thanksgiving Day away from home, they consider the Macy’s Parade a great honor that they hope will inspire their students to appreciate band music even more.

“In a time when we’re losing music departments,” Bergeron said, “cuts are happening left and right, I think this is a really special opportunity for us to advocate for what it is we do.

“I just see this as a monument to what it is we do on a day-to-day basis."

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Leicester, Leominster Marlborough band directors part of Macy’s Parade