WASHINGTON (KRT) – Colonels are rare in the rank-lean Marine Corps, but the biggest thrill in Michael Colburn’s life this week wasn’t his promotion to lieutenant colonel.

It was his opportunity to take up the baton of the Marine Band as its 27th director since it played for the presidential inauguration of violinist Thomas Jefferson in 1801.

Christened by Jefferson as “The President’s Own,” the band officially exists to give pleasure to the president and the Marine Corps Commandant and their guests. Less officially, the 140-member Marine Band makes Washington’s sultry summer nights softer and more glamorous and spreads that glow nationwide during its traditional 50-day fall national tour.

Colburn, 39, got his start in St. Albans, Vt., in the fifth grade when he started playing the euphonium. It’s a baritone horn, a small version of the tuba that his older brother played. The euphonium, Colburn said, remains “my first love.”

Like the band’s other members, Colburn auditioned first and then joined the Marine Corps in 1987. Musicians do not serve in combat.

One of the thrills of the work, Colburn said, is the chance to be a “fly on the wall” at historic national events such as inaugurations, treaty-signings and prestigious White House dinners.

He succeeds Col. Timothy Foley, 57, a clarinet player from Berwick, Pa., northwest of Philadelphia, who is one of the few Marine Band musicians without a master’s degree.

“I feel like I’ve gotten it with on-the-job-training,” said Foley, who since 1996 has directed or managed roughly 500 performances a year by the band or ensembles of its players, including dance and country bands.

In retirement, Foley plans to conduct college musicians on a part-time basis, put bands together for music festivals, pick up the piano again and do a lot of kayaking.

Foley’s predecessor, John R. Bourgeois, told a marvelous story from the Marine Band’s White House life during the Lyndon Johnson presidency.

Johnson, who loved to dance, promised several women at a dinner that he’d dance with them after dinner. Soon after Johnson hit the floor with the first partner, he whispered to Bourgeois, “Faster!” So Bourgeois picked up the pace.

The same thing happened with succeeding partners. “Faster!” Johnson would order and Bourgeois would pick up the tempo until dancers were whirling like dervishes.

Next morning, a Johnson aide phoned Bourgeois to ask whether he’d gone mad.

“He wanted you to change the numbers faster (not speed up the tempo), so that he could change partners faster!” the aide explained.

For more information, including performance schedules and audio clips, see: http://www.marineband.usmc.mil/.