Music has more than a few magical abilities. It can connect us with others. It can connect us with something bigger than ourselves. It can connect us with the emotions we feel within. It can even help us express those emotions in unique ways. For the veterans who participate in the UTSA On-Corps band program, music is helping them check off all the boxes above.
On-Corps is a community engagement program offered to veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces by UTSA Arts at no cost. The band’s participants receive instrumental instruction and participate in live musical performances. The class meets two hours every Saturday in the fall and spring for group sectional lessons in woodwind, brass and percussion instruments and for large band ensemble rehearsals.
The program has given many San Antonio veterans an outlet for artistic expression and a place to create meaningful relationships. In addition to transforming their lives, the program shows significant potential as a case study on the benefits of music to improve wellbeing music therapy.
Tracy Cowden, the Roland K. Blumberg Endowed Professor and director of the UTSA School of Music, launched On-Corps in September 2022. Her inspiration came from the New Horizons International Music Association, which offers several beginning music programs for adults. That idea sparked the decision to create a beginning and intermediate band for veterans at UTSA.
The band has grown from its first class of 23 members to 80 members and comprises of three ensembles: the Missions Band (beginner), the Alamo Band (intermediate) and the 210 Jazz Band (intermediate). All three ensembles perform a concert in the UTSA Recital Hall at the end of every semester.
On-Corps and its student-veterans, some of whom entered the program without any prior musical experience, have made remarkable progress across four semesters of weekly classes.
“It’s exciting to realize that we can start to begin to look at a little more challenging music, because the folks have made such progress, and the group has gotten larger,” says Dean Zarmbinski, On-Corps director and former commander of the Air Force Band of the West.
Many participating veterans have attested to the positive impact the program has on them — from alleviating anxiety and depression to helping them find a renewed sense of purpose and meaning in their lives.
Member David Mercado, a veteran who has played the trumpet in both the Alamo Band and the 210 Jazz Band for the last two years, says that the program has impacted his life for the better, and before joining, he had never played an instrument before.
“It’s something to get them out,” Mercado says about what the program is doing for veterans. “They get to be in the community again and be around fellow vets, and it’s something positive to look forward to. Playing and reading music helps keep our minds active.”
Patricia Snelson is a former member of the Women’s Army Corps who now plays the flute in On-Corps’ Alamo Band. She says that despite different military service backgrounds, members have formed a meaningful camaraderie as “one cohesive unit that’s very warming and rewarding to be a part of.” Another band member, Ed Silva, found his own path to healing through On-Corps and other musical activities after his wife of 56 years passed away.
“It’s helped tremendously … Music had a lot to do with ‘me’ coming back,” Silva says. “I don’t know how to say it; it’s like my mind is in a different place now.”
UTSA Film and Media student Ireland Robinson recently dug into the therapeutic aspects of the program in “On-Corps,” a documentary film she directed that focuses on capturing the veterans’ personal accounts. Over the course of a year, she and her classmates interviewed Zarmbinski, Silva, Cowden and several others to learn more about their experiences and the transformational nature of On-Corps.
“Their story still touches my heart,” Robinson said during an interview last fall. “The way they describe it to me, it’s not just about finding camaraderie, but about being with people who speak the same language as you.”
Robinson hopes that the documentary will shine more light on a program already has a burgeoning national reputation.
On-Corps has captured the attention of other institutions across the nation looking to begin their own bands for vets and the Music for Veterans National Association will support the development and growth of these programs.
In fact, UTSA’s band already served as a model for the creation of The Congaree New Horizons Armed Services Veterans Band, formed in affiliation with the University of South Carolina’s Congaree New Horizons Band Program.
