Correspondence

A letter from a reader of the Lehigh alumni Bulletin

Remembering the ‘Boss’

I am writing my first letter to the editor to tell you how thoroughly I enjoyed the article Bring That Choir Back! about the 150th anniversary of organized singing at Lehigh in the Spring 2019 alumni Bulletin. I am an alumnus of the Class of 1961 and spent five years as a piano accompanist and baritone in the Glee Club from 1957 through 1962 under the direction of the “Boss”! It was a tremendous experience and Bob Cutler was my favorite professor of all time. In addition to being an excellent musician and teacher, the “Boss” was always available to mentor and counsel the students. I personally credit him for “keeping me going” at Lehigh. The article was very informative about the history of the glee club and other musical organizations. I am glad to see that music is flourishing at Lehigh much more than when I was there. At that time, Professors Cutler and Jonathan Elkus essentially were the music department, and you couldn’t even minor in music!

H. Barry Bergman '61 is 'the tall guy' holding music to the right of Bob Cutler in the photo.

H. Barry Bergman '61 is 'the tall guy' holding music to the right of Bob Cutler in the photo.

I was very surprised to see myself in the photo captioned “The Glee Club on tour on the East Coast, circa late 1950s or early 60s.” I am the tall guy holding music to the right of Bob Cutler at the piano. For sure it was some time between September 1957 and June 1962 although I couldn’t identify the venue.

I recently found my collection of concert programs and newspaper articles about the glee club during my Lehigh years. After scanning them for my own files, I passed them along to the music department via one of the student choir historians, Olivia Lee ’20. I also found some audio tapes I had made of the glee club during those years, digitized them and passed the resulting files on CDs to Ms. Lee. She and Stephanie Rosenthal (mentioned in your article) apparently are very dedicated to organizing the archives of the musical organizations. In addition, I had photos and programs from the 1962 glee club tour of Puerto Rico, which I also passed along and was happy to see them show up in the time line that Stephanie and Olivia constructed.

Once again, kudos for the excellent reporting about musical activities at Lehigh.

H. Barry Bergman ’61

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