'It's all about the band'

He's the leader of the band, the one most people in the audience watch.

But conductor Mitch Martin says it's not about him.

"No, it's all about the band," said the assistant conductor of the 50-member 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing Band, which travels 30,000 miles a year for more than 150 performances.

Martin, a 21-year Marine, has taken on an added duty in the civilian sector, as conductor of the Craven Community Concert Band. The band was founded in 2000 by Robert Bianco. After Bianco's death, band directors Brad Langhans of West Craven High and Mark Lorek of Grover C. Fields Middle School guided the band the past three seasons.

The Marine band has ample rehearsal time in addition to physical training and field drills. The all-volunteer community band practices just once a week.

"It seems the band is in good hands," Martin said of the Craven volunteers. "The challenge is we rehearse once a week. That is going to be a big challenge - putting a program together with limited amount of rehearsal time."

But the gunnery sergeant is confident for two reasons - the Craven band's track record and the fact there are similarities among orchestra bands.

"A band's a band. It takes everybody to work together as one to make it work," he said. "I think we're going to have a good time putting all this together. I think it is going to be fun for me, and I consider it an honor to be able to get up and hopefully be the equalizer - balance the band and motivate them to make music."

His own musical background dates to his childhood.

He's a Maryland native and attended the state university there, before joining the Marines as a musician in 1987.

His father, William, who spent 40 years in the elevator construction business, was in the Army in the early 1960s during the Cuban missile crisis. He was not a musician, but his two sons were.

Martin began playing trumpet when he was 10, following the lead of his older brother, Christopher. By high school, Martin was performing for his school and county groups and was chosen for the Maryland all-state band and orchestra.

"I was very blessed to be able to do that," he said. The music ranged from snappy pep band tunes to classical.

"We played some pretty heavy orchestral stuff, actually," he said. "The experience from orchestra requires you to play in different keys. It's almost like playing different trumpets that you've got to read differently. It's fun."

He didn't play in a marching band until his days at the University of Maryland. He still prefers orchestra.

"It's like apples and oranges, because marching band is more about making shapes on the field," he said. "The music's cool and people like to see you do cool shapes and they like to hear this loud, higher, louder, faster (music)."

He describes playing the trumpet as being a full-body experience.

"It's your whole body. It's a little-known fact that it takes over 200 muscles to produce a single note on trumpet," he said. "The trumpet is really just an amplifier for what you're doing."

During his 21 years in the Marine Corps, he has had duty stations around the country, including teaching trumpet for six years at the Armed Forces School of Music in Norfolk. He had tours in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait during Desert Storm in the early 1990s and he served as Tactical Air Command Center security chief in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom for two years, beginning in 2004.

October will mark four years of calling Cherry Point home base for Martin, his wife, Donna, and their two children, Zachary and Timothy.