Putting Music First: Trombone Professor Mark Lusk will present his 68th faculty recital this month

“If you put the music first, good things will happen.” 

That is the mantra Mark Lusk, professor of trombone at Penn State, preaches to his students all year long. To illustrate how he practices what he preaches, he kicks off each semester with a faculty recital. 

“[The mantra] doesn’t mean that music is supposed to be the absolute most important thing in your life; that’s not what I’m trying to say. It’s that when you’re making music, you’re connected to it somehow. Because you can’t expect your music to mean something to somebody if it doesn’t mean anything to you,” he explains. “I think when people hear me play at these recitals, you hear that.”

While it’s not unusual for faculty members to present recitals occasionally, the concert on January 16 will be Lusk’s 68^th recital, and that is unusual. He’s been teaching at Penn State for 35 years, and, barring extreme circumstances such as the birth of a child or a pandemic, he has put on a recital each semester. While the public is always invited and welcomed, he’s really doing it for his students.

“I’ve always had the notion, the idea, the philosophy, that I kind of wanted the students to have a chance to hear me play before I started yapping at ’em,” he says. “I’m just trying to really kick off the semester establishing what we’re here for, and sort of setting the tone musically, trombone-wise and ensemble-wise.”

The recitals have grown bigger and more extravaganza-like in recent years, he says, often including guest instrumentalists and alumni. Audience members this month can expect to see a lot of trombone studio alumni in this recital, playing music that represents a wide variety of styles. 

In addition, “I think right now we need a lot of inspirational music to keep us going, and so it will have a lot of that,” Lusk says.

Lusk’s illustrious music career is a testament to his mantra. 

He started playing trombone at age 15.

“I was born and raised in a small town in Kentucky, and I was an athlete. And then this guy came to my hometown, almost like The Music Man. He comes to town and he gets the band going, and I was just fascinated with him and with the whole idea,” Lusk says.

Intrigued by the versatility of the trombone, he fell in love with it, and a few years later he was accepted into the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where he earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees. He went on to play with a diverse list of musical groups, including the famous Woody Herman Band, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Eastman Wind Ensemble, before accepting a job on the faculty at Penn State in 1986. 

On Broadway

Since then, he has traveled the world playing and teaching. He even spent nine years commuting to New York City to work as a substitute trombonist on Broadway, where he played for shows including Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, and Beauty and the Beast, among others. 

“Subbing on Broadway is one of the toughest jobs in the world, it really is. You have to show up, and play that book, and no one – the conductor, nobody – should be aware that the person who is usually there playing it every day isn’t there. … It’s a challenge,” he says.

In 2005, he was hired as a permanent trombonist for the Broadway version of Little Women. Unfortunately, his wife, Patrice, was diagnosed with cancer during that show’s run, so he left in order to care for her until she recovered. The show ended before he could return.

These days, Lusk spends his summers teaching trombone at the Cleveland Trombone Seminar and the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy, and continues to tour, both as a soloist and with a variety of groups.

“I’ve been really lucky,” Lusk says. “That’s just kind of the glory of the trombone; you get to do so many different things.”

Lusk is not the only member of his family to have achieved musical success. His eldest daughter, Kaitlyn Lusk, is a vocalist who performed with the Boston Pops at the age of 14 and continues to sing professionally.

Lusk says the students and the alumni of the trombone studio are a second family to him, and he speaks about them with a fatherly pride.

“I have raised seven kids, but all these 170-plus alumni are like my kids, too. … They are literally with me from the day they audition until the day they graduate,” he says. “So I’m pretty proud of the fact that about 95 percent of those 170 have made a life in music in some way or another, which is an extremely high percentage.”

To celebrate his 35^th year with the trombone studio, he is involving as many alumni as possible in what he calls the Lusk Alumni Recording Project. The project entails bringing trombone studio alumni together for the faculty recitals at Penn State, as well as in recording sessions across the country, and will feature interviews with and music by Penn State trombone studio alumni. Ultimately, for Lusk, the project is about sharing the story about his beloved trombone studio, and how putting the music first for 35 years has made so many good things happen.

Professor Mark Lusk’s 68^th faculty recital will be held at 7:30 p.m. January 16 in the Recital Hall on the University Park campus. Admission is free to the public. NOTE: DUE TO PENDING SNOW, THE RECITAL HAS BEEN POSTPONED TO JANUARY 19 AT 7:30 P.M. AND JANUARY 23 AT 4 P.M.