USA East Music NYSB BULLETIN - SUMMER 2018 | Page 2

From the Bandmaster
We All Have a Place
One of my favorite things to do is to play golf and one of the many reasons I love playing golf
is that I can spend the time being alone with my thoughts. On the flipside, golf can allow me
to spend the hours playing and conversing with close friends … or complete strangers.
I recently spent an afternoon at my local town golf course where I ended up being
randomly paired with two older gentlemen. They were about 30 years older than me and
from very different walks of life. One served in the military when he was young and told
stories about being laid off job after job as he grew older. The other was highly successful,
clearly wealthy and had travelled the world over. These two men had completely different
backgrounds, work experience, family life—they could not have been more different—but
for four hours on that day, they were doing the same thing in the same place at relatively the
same level. We spent some great hours learning about each other, our differences and our
similarities while playing a game we all loved.
A marvelous thing about music, and specifically music within The Salvation Army, is that
regardless of background or experience or income level or ethnicity, you can have a place,
you can belong. In a band or vocal group, you can sit next to someone who is fifty years older
than you or twenty years younger; you can sit next to someone you’ve known all your life
or someone born in a country half way around the world. You can end up next to someone
that you never would have met without being in that particular place, at that particular time,
playing or singing the music that you both love.
Every season, the New York Staff Band has the opportunity to form amazing connections
with other musicians who appreciate the medium of ministry presented by the band. It is a
much-loved feature of membership in this group. This season we had the privilege of playing
alongside musicians from Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, and from all across our own Eastern
Territory. The experiences we have as Salvation Army musicians are beautiful and unique,
erasing barriers and reminding us that we all have a place … that we belong together.
Commissioners William A. &
G. Lorraine Bamford
Territorial Leaders
USA, East
Lt. Colonel James LaBossiere
Executive Officer
New York Staff Band
Derek W. Lance
Bandmaster, NYSB
ON THE COVER:
New York Staff Bandsman,
Harrison Lubin, gathers with
the Saitama Premier Band.
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