A musical treat 60 years ago
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ALPENA – Sixty years ago, on August 18, 1966, the three Kent brothers of Ossineke performed a trumpet trio, accompanied by the Alpena City Band. The piece was Bugler’s Holiday, written by Leroy Anderson. The three soloists were Mike Kent, 19 (about to start his second year of engineering studies at General Motors Institute), Tim Kent, 17 (about to start his Senior year at Alpena High School), and Chris Kent who was 13 years old and about to start eighth grade at Sanborn Elementary School. This was the only time the three brothers would ever perform together.
Mike had earlier held the position of first trumpet in the Alpena High School band while he had attended A.H.S., and Tim served as the first trumpet in this same band from 1965 until he graduated in 1967. Later, Chris would hold this position during his years at Alpena High, as would also their younger sister Elyse, during her years at the high school.
Each of the Kent trumpeters had been taught by their father, George Kent of Ossineke. He had been trained by the trumpet players in the concert band of the National Broadcasting Company in Chicago, before NBC relocated to New York City.
During the 1960s and 70s, the Alpena City Band, conducted by Charles Lenz, rehearsed each Tuesday evening all year, and performed concerts each Thursday evening during the summer. The rehearsals were held in the City Council chamber of City Hall , and the concerts were played on the outdoor elevated bandstand, just east of City Hall (now a grass-covered median strip). The concert audience listened from their cars in the adjacent parking lot, and applauded loudly after each piece by honking their car horns.
All four of the Kent siblings became high level trumpet performers under the direction of their father, and Tim and Chris also studied trumpet performance at the University of Michigan. However, only one of the siblings pursued a career in music. Mike founded a major properties management company in Destin, Florida. Chris developed a highly respected community design firm, based near Destin but operating nationwide. Elyse served for decades as a veterinarian in Los Angeles, eventually creating a mobile practice that traveled to its patients.
Tim first played for two years in the opera and symphony orchestra of Trier, Germany. Then he performed for four years as a free-lance musician in Chicago (playing long-running musicals, recording movie sound tracks and commercials for TV and radio, and performing at the Las Vegas style Mill Run Theatre with such stars as Tom Jones, the Beach Boys, and Mitzi Gaynor). Finally, he served for eighteen years as one of four trumpets in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (whose fifteen-member brass section is considered the finest symphonic brass section in the world).