For someone who spent his career playing trumpet with one of America’s finest bands, Robert W. Lambert, AS ’73, doesn’t like to toot his own horn.

“There are cab drivers in New York who can play the trumpet better than I can,” Lambert, who retired in 2002 after 27 years of membership in the U.S. Army Field Band, says. “But, I had a whole career of playing, which I had wanted to do. I played in front of thousands of people.”

Lambert grew up in Newark, Del., and now lives in Glen Burnie, Md., with his wife, Lyn, AS ’72. The couple have two daughters— Jennifer, AS 2000, and Amy, currently a junior at the University.

“I started playing the trumpet in elementary school,” Lambert says. “It was no big deal.” That all changed a few years later, when the renowned band from the University of Michigan played a concert at UD. Lambert was in the audience for the show, and it marked “a pivotal point in my life,” he says.

“A guy came out of the band and played a solo,” he continues. “His name was David Blackinton, and he was a great player. The next day, my band director said, ‘Would you like to take lessons from him?’”

It turned out Blackinton was set to become a trumpet instructor at UD (he now teaches at Brigham Young University). Lambert began studying with him, and the two became lifelong friends. “He’s probably one of the most influential men in my life,” Lambert says. “He made me start over, and six months later, I was in the all-state band.”

After graduation, Lambert—like many other young people in the early ’70s—found he really didn’t know what he wanted to do next. “I considered myself a solid minor-league trumpet player,” he says. “I didn’t think I was good enough to be a professional trumpet player.”

A stint as a student teacher at a Wilmington-area high school convinced him that he didn’t want a career in education. But, Lambert continued playing in a jazz band and ultimately decided to pursue a graduate degree in music composition at Pennsylvania State University. “I played in all the groups there,” he says. “I found myself playing a lot.”

It was Blackinton who then, once again, played a pivotal role in Lambert’s life and career. He suggested that Lambert transfer to Catholic University as a performance major. And, he also urged Lambert to audition for one of the major military service bands, which paid graduate school tuition for members.

Lambert auditioned for the Marine, Air Force, Navy and Army bands, and the Army called him back. He got a haircut before the second audition, “and they took me,” he says. He entered basic training in 1974 and was subsequently assigned to a ceremonial unit of the band. He joined the field band in 1975.

The U.S. Army Field Band plays several major national tours a year, a number of shorter tours and travels internationally.

“I’ve been to all 50 states and dozens of countries,” Lambert says. “We played a lot of small towns.” In these communities, the band’s free concerts offered many people a rare chance—perhaps their first and only chance—to hear a top-flight group of musicians play quality material, he says.

“It’s a 65-piece concert band,” he explains, “like a symphony orchestra, but no strings.” A 24-30 member vocal chorus was sometimes part of the lineup as well.

“We played challenging music, all kinds of music,” Lambert says, counting among his favorite pieces the Aegean Festival Overture, because “it’s extremely challenging and difficult...a wonderful piece of music.”

The field band plays patriotic songs, Sousa marches, original music, pop, Broadway, classical and movie music, he says. “We were very versatile. We played everywhere from the greatest concert halls in the world to cow palaces with dirt on the floor to everywhere in between. We played in a lot of high school auditoriums.”

On one tour, in 1989, the U.S. Department of State asked the band to attend an international trade event in India. Lambert visited the Taj Mahal—a sight he says he will never forget. Another time, while staying overnight in a town in the southwest corner of Kansas, the band discovered that its hotel was next door to a biker bar. “The bouncer turned out to be the town sheriff,” Lambert says. “It was an interesting evening, to say the least.”

He says he always enjoyed playing numbers such as “The Stars and Stripes Forever” for an audience that likely had never heard it played by a band that knew how to play it well. “That never gets old,” Lambert says.

Despite such satisfactions, Lambert says he doesn’t miss the band. “I’m too old for the road, and I don’t miss the work you had to do to keep your chops up,” he explains.

Lambert now is a teleservice representative for the Social Security Administration in Baltimore.
He says he relaxes by watching baseball and gardening.

—Kevin Riordan