Vincent Rufino Has Enjoyed a Rewarding Life of Music

It happens every day at lunch or after a day of teaching.

Vincent Rufino will be sitting at home in Succasunna, and makes the request to his smart speakers. “I can listen to anything I want to. Sometimes I’ll listen to the Beach Boys, sometimes I'll listen to Sinatra, I'll listen to Brahms. listen to Beethoven, and Mozart. Every afternoon at 12 o'clock when I'm eating lunch, I ask the smart speaker to connect me to WQXR, the classical music station in New York City. I listen in to ‘Mozart at Noon.”

One would expect nothing less, perhaps, from a man who has made music – whether listening to it or teaching it – his life. Rufino is concluding this month a wonderful career of educating others as he departs Saint Elizabeth’s University after 12 years, this after the students of West Morris Central High School had been the beneficiary of his lyrical and instrumental wisdom for 39 years.

He recalls the tears when he said farewell on his last day at the Chester school. “I cried when I turned in my keys,” Rufino says. “That was finality. It was a wonderful experience; it was a wonderful place.”

His presence made it like so for others.

Rufino, 74, did not come from a musical family, but radio station WNEW-AM was often on in his house when he was younger, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. heard through the speakers.  Also, as a teenager, he had seen the great Leonard Bernstein at the podium conducting at Philharmonic Hall. He had gone with his class courtesy of his teacher and high school, and it was something he would never forget “Their efforts worked, as far as my life was concerned,” Rufino says. “Because having gone to those concerts, it gave me a love of classical music.”

He would pay it forward. During his two years as a teacher at Hoboken High School, he saw to it that his students took in live concerts in Manhattan. One of those students was Julio Fernandez, a guitarist for the popular jazz group, Spyro Gyra. “He was the President of my choir when I taught in Hoboken, he sang in my madrigal group, and he played tuba in the band,” Rufino says of Fernandez. “I always was amazed when Johnny Carson used to host The Tonight Show. There would be guests on there, and there’s my former student - I'm watching him on television at 11:30 at night! It was a surrealistic experience.” When Spyro Gyra performed at the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown in 2014, Rufino contacted Fernandez via Facebook and said, “I'd love to see you. I haven't seen you since you graduated.” Fernandez asked his former teacher to come early and arranged to have him come to the dressing room. “We had a nice reunion,” Rufino says.

Vincent Rufino conducting Handel’s Messiah

 Rufino conducted George Frideric Handel’s Messiah at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center for 26 years, and he many times took his West Morris Central students to observe. “I had taken the West Morris Central chorus to Raritan Valley College for a choral day that was being sponsored. There were choirs from all over New Jersey that came and sang for each other, and then there was an adjudicator who made comments on how to improve your performance. The organization that sponsored that was the National Choral Council, which is the council that sponsors Messiah at Avery Fisher Hall.” David Randolph, who was the initial conductor for Messiah at Lincoln Center since its inception, was unable one year to do it, and passed Rufino’s name on to the head of the NCC. “He already knew of my work,” Rufino says. “They were very strongly based in education because they realized the future audiences were coming from the youth.” He then adds another key point. “The orchestra director at West Morris Central and I worked very, very closely together. We took a survey one time and asked how many students had ever been to New York City, and we just figured it would be the majority, but that wasn't the case. Very few from the Long Valley and Chester area had gone into New York City. That was the genesis of taking the kids to go to Avery Fisher Hall at that time.”

Rufino, who has a doctorate in Music History from Drew University in Madison, is a member of the Hanover Wind Symphony, and he plays clarinet, saxophone, and flute. His wife is also a musician, she a cellist and church organist, and five of his children are professional musicians.

Many of Rufino’s students now have careers in music, but not all. “I can't begin to tell you the number of messages I get at Christmastime from former students who are not musicians that are now dispersed all over the United States. They tell me, ‘Every Christmas we look for a performance of Messiah because of us doing that in high school.’ Some are teachers, they’re engineers, they’re scientists. They did not become musicians, but it meant so much to them, and it’s become a tradition for them and their families.”