Rob Breen:
CLASS OF 1972
Hartford High SchoolClass of 1972
Hartford, CT
Boston University - ArtsClass of 1977
Boston, MA
Rob's Story
Life is good. Here's the story:
Life (sometime around 1999) is about raising kids and playing music. I'm blessed. Each year the kids grow wonderfully, and find so much more of themselves. They never cease to amaze me. Just like their mother. Through it all, I manage to get paid for playing music. Life is good, and getting better all the time.
Update - September 8, 2015: Military Retirement began officially on Feb 1 2015. Nice to get paid to stay home after putting in 36 years between regular Army and CT National Guard. I'll keep the day job in IT for a few more years, but now, more than ever before, life is about playing music as a woodwind free-lancer all over CT.
Update - May 21, 2022. I pushed the retirement button on the day job five years ago. The first 25 years I worked for Aetna were at the Middletown site. When that closed I moved up to the home office at 151 Farmington Avenue, just four blocks away from HPHS. It was a good career, but now I'm free to do what suits me best.
In September 2019 I relocated to the Seattle area to attend one of the few trade schools in the country that teaches brass and ...Expand for more
woodwind instrument repair. The course got somewhat truncated by Covid, but by June 2020 I came back to CT and a job that had been waiting for me. Now, I'm doing that retirement thing on MY terms.😜
Mornings are for "woodshed and workout". Practice time (what musicians call "woodshedding") for clarinet/sax/flute. The skills keep improving. Then there's a run or a bike ride. The speed and distance keep diminishing, but I know I have to keep on going.
Afternoons are at the workbench at Beller's Music in Manchester doing maintenance and repair work on the store's fleet of rental instruments, local school system instruments, and whatever else comes in the front door. Making a positive difference in the local music education scene, and keeping myself challenged and humble.
Evenings and weekends are for teaching, rehearsals and gigs. Only a few students right now (Covid), but more than enough clarinet and sax work with local symphony orchestras, theatre groups and jazz bands to make that morning woodshed time very necessary.
Looking back to June 1972 I can say that where I am now is EXACTLY where I wanted to be back then.
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