![]() When he eventually met Ruth, that band experience scored big points. News of his musical abilities reached the ears of Glenn Miller, who drafted him to arrange for his famous Army Air Force Band. When the war came, he enlisted and conducted a band in what was then called the Army Air Force. He studied at Columbia University to be a schoolteacher, but his real gift seemed to be forming orchestral bands. Birnbaum enrolled at the City College of New York at the age of 15. "He just defined music in the Basking Ridge area for many years," said his son, Alan Birnbaum, 54, of Hampton.īorn on Coney Island, N.Y., he was a precocious child. Birnbaum, who played a number of woodwind instruments, brought citified style - and well-known talent - to the local music scene. "He impressed people."Īs the founder of the well-received Somerset Hills Symphony and the Somerset Hills Concert Band, Mr. It was a calling, I think," said Ruth Birnbaum, 79. Birnbaum built a reputation that was said to draw parents of musically talented children to the district, his wife, Ruth, said. But that was more his destiny than his intention.Ī music teacher at Ridge High School for 34 years, Mr. Birnbaum also became a vigorous musical institution in Bernards Township. ![]() Wherever Norris Birnbaum went, music followed.Ī cerebral, dignified man of the classics, Mr. Birnbaum, of Basking Ridge, died May 17 following a long illness. Birnbaum taught Band, Instrumental Music and Humanities during the period the 1969 class cohort attended RHS. This section includes obituaries of teachers who taught at RHS any time during the period that the class of 1969 attended. See RHS 1969 Elementary and Middle School Teacher Memorials
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