In Memory of Robert T. Volbrecht
They say that when you’re about to die your life passes before your eyes. In my case, that happens when someone I love dies. So it has been this week, upon learning of the death of my old friend, teacher and mentor, Bob Volbrecht.
Along with many of my classmates, I met ”Mr. V” on the first day of my freshman year in high school, in Bernardsville, New Jersey. We knew almost immediately how gifted he was, not just because he sang and played beautifully, but also because, new teacher notwithstanding, he had a bunch of high school kids eating out of his hand almost immediately. What I didn’t know that day, was that I had now come into contact with a life force who would lay the foundation for my future.
Over the four years that I had Bob as a teacher, he taught me, and many other students, how to sing. He taught us major choral works that were unprecedented in High School Choral performances….Beethoven’s Mass in C”, Mozart’s ”Coronation Mass”, Poulenc’s “Gloria”, Bernstein’s ”Chichester Psalms”, Menotti’s opera, ”Amahl and the Night Visitors”. He formed advanced groups, Madrigal Singers and Consort singers, that originally specialized in Renaissance music, but soon came to perform music for chamber singers from all eras….Debussy, Hindemith, Vaughn Williams and Healy Willan. Not content to train performers, Bob also trained music listeners, appreciators and historians. We studied music history from a college text. He took us to New York to see ”La Boheme”, ”Pagliacci”, ”Mass” by Leonard Bernstein. He took us to Philadelphia to hear the Poulenc ”Gloria” performed by Westminster Symphonic Choir and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
And the fun! Many of us would check into homeroom and head right down to the music suite. One day several of us were crowded into his tiny office when the intercom clicked on. There was a short whispered message from one of the secretaries: ”Nuessle’s on his way down.” Click. (The vice-principal). We all ran and hid in the choir robe closet until the coast was clear.
Bob loved eating out, so field trips to NYC would always include dinner at Charlie Brown’s or The Magic Pan. Also book stores and music stores. One time we were walking down the street and he asked, ”See the crane on top of that building.”
“Yeah.”
“Know how they get them down?”
“No. How?”
“They clear the streets below and push ’em off.”
My husband has always found it hysterically funny that I believed him. what can I say? The man was persuasive.
But beyond all of that, Bob Volbrecht taught me how to teach. He was a very busy man, and if he was running late for Junior High choir, he sent me to direct it until he could get there. (He’d never get away with that now!) When he formed a summer community choir to perform Gounod’s ”Saint Cecilia Mass”, he had me run the alto sectionals. I was a teenager among all those adults, quaking in my boots, but he had confidence in me, and they were all very kind. He was teaching me my path forward.
When it came time for me to interview and audition at Westminster Choir College, he took me for my audition. Once I was accepted and began attending there, he gave me my first small studio of private voice students.. I was close enough to Bernardsville to come home on weekends, so every Sunday afternoon, seven of his altos would meet me at the methodist church. At 18, I was giving voice lessons!
I met my husband at Westminster, and after graduation went on to teach music, first in the Quakertown School district in Quakertown PA for 30 years, and now at a small Christian school nearby. I am still doing what he taught me to do. I went where he sent me, and wound up with a career, a husband, 3 sons….a life. They are all part of his legacy.
I am just one person. After teaching and mentoring hundreds of students like me, he left Bernardsville for Tustin California, where he served for 30 years as the Minister of Music at Tustin Presbyterian church. I’m positive he touched thousands of lives there.
Over the years we stayed in touch….as well as I am able to stay in touch with anyone. He sent me a recording of his choir, I took my family and went to see him.
The last time I saw him was six years ago. My husband and I took a cross country road trip, and stopped in Santa Ana to have brunch with him. He was his same old self, full of life, and making us feel like the most special two people in the world. Still setting my life on course, he recommended his Medicare plan to us. His recommendation was all I needed….saved me a lot of work and research😊
Last week I was crying, and saying I wished I’d gotten to say goodbye. My husband replied,
”You did, six years ago. You just didn’t know it.”
youonlyhavetogetthrutoday 