Harley Brumbaugh, who has led the 70-piece Renton City Concert Band since one year after its inception in 1985, will be conducting his final, formal concert with the band on Thursday, June 5. Curtain time is 7:30 p.m. with a reception following to honor Brumbaugh for his distinguished career in music and the audience-pleasing 18 years of band performances under his direction.

Fans and friends should note that because of the anticipated large crowd, the concert will be at Hazen High School, 1101 Hoquiam N.E. in the Highlands area of Renton (not at the usual Carco Theater). Tickets may be ordered by calling (425) 430-6707.

Brumbaugh, the classic “local boy makes good,” emerged as an exceptionally talented trumpet player from the Snoqualmie Valley school system. He was 9 when his family moved to the now only-a-memory town of Snoqualmie Falls. He was teaching other kids to play the trumpet while still in elementary school and organized his own band not much later. Today he is highly regarded in the Puget Sound region as a talented trumpet player, vocalist, band and choral director, educator, composer, minister of music, lecturer and published author and poet, and has utilized all of these talents in carving out a career over the past 40-plus years.

Along the way, Brumbaugh taught instrumental and choral music at all levels in Ketchikan, Alaska, Port Angeles and Renton from 1959 to 1972 – most of those years in Renton. He was Hazen High School’s first director of choral music, as well as drama director. During his tenure he founded and directed the school’s Studio Singers, pioneering the vocal jazz movement in the state. He also composed the Hazen High School Alma Mater. A nice coincidence that Hazen was chosen for this “farewell” concert. Another involvement that contributed to the artistic health of the Renton area, where he and his wife Cathy lived for more than 40 years, was as a member of the Renton Little Theater founding committee. The subsequent success of that theater group, now the Valley Community Players, led to the building of Carco Theater.

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