Raised on Baptist church music and Motown in Baltimore, Marcus Rabb brings a deep passion to his music making — and to his role as a music instructor and director of bands and jazz studies, a new position that centralizes contemporary music at the Academy and expands the types of music offered to students.
Rabb, a teacher and mentor for the past 27 years, believes in the spark a single person can be in a student’s life. For him, that individual was jazz icon Wynton Marsalis. “He is the reason I pursued a trumpet major in music,” Rabb says. When Rabb was 16, Marsalis gave a concert at his high school and Rabb performed with him. “That experience just changed my whole life.”
Rabb continued to hone his craft as a performer and composer at Howard University, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music. At Exeter, Rabb directs several contemporary music ensembles — including a new steel drums ensemble inspired by his time living in the Caribbean — four jazz ensembles, pep band and the concert band. He is also a co-adviser to the Exeter Association of Rock. “The music that we do is really cool,” he says. “It’s stuff that’s on the radio now.” Rabb arranges all the music for the students to account for varying skill levels.
How is Rabb finding Exonians after his first year of teaching? “It was really a shock for me to see students that were so eager,” he says. “I’ve never had so many kids hungry to do stuff. I was like, ‘Wow, I gotta keep up.’”
