A new venue for the new BAFFA orchestra conductor

When Bruce Engel, Bay Area Friends of Fine Arts’ (BAFFA) new orchestra conductor, first walked into the Patchogue Congregational Church looking for a rehearsal and performance space, “I just knew this was it,” he said, still in awe of the sanctuary.  “Martha Campanile [BAFFA choral director] suggested it.”

BAFFA Orchestra rehearsals began just this week on Wednesday evenings, Sept. 4, from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. Put this in your phone or mark your calendars: upcoming concerts, Sundays at 4 p.m., are Dec. 8, March 16, 2025, and June 1, 2025.

Engel is an approachable, engaging, sophisticated man with a storied, musical history over four-decades long, beginning as a professional trumpeter who performed under conductor greats like Leonard Bernstein and Michael Tilson Thomas with the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera for 14 years. He toured with composer greats like Henry Mancini and Burt Bacharach and as music director and conductor with the Touring Orchestra of Italy. His last role lasted 32 years at St. Anthony’s High School in Huntington, conducting its orchestra and symphonic band, and as music director of the Stony Brook Wind Ensemble for 30 years at the Staller Center.

“We had 11 candidates, and we interviewed three people,” said Donna Smosky, BAFFA’s board president, who said the selection committee of five consisted of three board members and two from the orchestra. “We had at least one we wanted to come back, and then we interviewed Bruce. He was the star and was so impressive. He was already there for the interview before the appointed time and even helped set up tables and chairs for the others. He has a great sense of humor, and we have nine people coming into the orchestra who have played with him before.” 

Engel was lured to the notes of a clarinet as he passed the orchestra room in second or third grade at Lamberton Elementary, in Philadelphia, and wanted to be part of it.  “My music teacher said there were no more clarinets, so I asked what other instrument looked like that, that’s held up like that and has the loudest sound, and it was the trumpet,” he recalled. Engel said he didn’t take lessons right away, but then began once a week in fourth grade.

One of his eventual gigs included playing a herald trumpet with the Herald Trumpet Ensemble for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher when she stepped off a helicopter and walked onto the Intrepid. “I had a group, and hired eight herald trumpet musicians for it.” Talk about fanfare!

If all his prestigious performances were included, this story would go on for pages, but the collective impact of those assignments began to take its toll when he was 40. “I had a house, two children, and I’m running around and started feeling tired,” he said frankly. “I realized I wasn’t spending time with my children. We had moved to Staten Island. I was teaching trumpet at Wagner College, then was offered band conductor. At first it was part-time, then full-time.” Other jobs came along. Eventually, he decided to join St. Anthony’s.

He thought he’d travel a bit, take in concerts after announcing his retirement this year, but decided he’d missed the interesting musical collaborations he’d had.

Enter BAFFA and Smosky’s invitation.

So what does a conductor do? It seems like a mystical position, a magician’s, if you will, who draws out the notes and passion from a number of instruments to create a whole sound.

“Imagine I ask you to count silently to five. At five, you follow the conductor, he starts the group and makes 50 musicians or so land on five. You start blowing or plucking together and end together.

“There’s 100 different ideas, styles and tempos. The conductor must study the music so they all play as one to the conductor’s concept. Bullies don’t work. He or she must have the respect of the orchestra. And you must study everyone’s part. Sometimes you have to look at the instrument. The tempo is going along and the conductor wants to slow up. So the musicians have to look up because everyone has to slow up together. To do that, the conductor makes a motion to catch the eye. You bring up the sound by raising his arm. And the conductor’s main job begins in rehearsal.”

He is never without two batons when he conducts. Just in case.

Engel commented on the historic church’s acoustics. “They have an amazing organ; there’s all the wood here, and the seats are fashioned as an amphitheater. There’s a vaulted ceiling, plus the stone foundation helps with the reverberation of sound,” he said. The 1893 architecture with its luminous stained-glass windows, some Tiffany designed, the space filled with the spiritual heft of prayers said all those years, is almost like an instrument itself.

BAFFA has history of its own. Founded in 1970, the BAFFA Symphony Orchestra is the longest continuously performing community orchestra on Long Island. A nonprofit, their office and art gallery is located in Sayville’s vintage and recently restored Gillette House.

Pastor Dwight Lee Wolter pointed out that the church used to have a ticket office; debates even took place here. Wolter himself has brought in his “Spirituality” series of musicals.

“What I like about this collaboration is that it’s a relationship with art, and this church,” he said, looking around, “is art.”