School-age Vermonters are generally familiar with the state song, “These Green Mountains,” even if they can’t sing it. Composed by Diane Martin and arranged by Rita Buglass-Gluck, it was the winning selection in a 1999 competition held by the Vermont Arts Council. Governor Howard Dean made it official in 2000.
The Green Mountain Youth Symphony in Montpelier was founded a year later. For its 25th anniversary celebration on Saturday, May 16, the orchestra will perform a new arrangement of “These Green Mountains” by alumnus Callum Robechek. The 20-year-old from Randolph played percussion and viola in the orchestra from sixth to 12th grade.
“The song has always been in my consciousness,” said Robechek, a sophomore at New York University majoring in composition with a focus on songwriting. He spoke from Prague, where he was studying abroad for the semester. “It feels — especially now that I’m not living there — one and the same with the people and the orchestra itself.”
Executive director Erin Eberhardt, who joined in 2025, had the idea to commission the arrangement. The 28-year-old has a bachelor’s degree in music education from the Berklee College of Music in Boston and moved to Vermont in 2024, where she soon befriended her next-door neighbor: Buglass-Gluck. Eberhardt also plays viola with the orchestra, as one of several community members who swell its ranks. She secured funding for Robechek’s commission from New Jersey’s Cummins Levenstein Charitable Foundation, which supports the orchestra annually.
This isn’t Robechek’s first work to see a Vermont performance. A veteran of Music-COMP, Vermont’s online composition coaching nonprofit, he wrote original pieces during high school for the Vermont Philharmonic and the Vermont Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. The latter performed his commemoration of the 2024 flood, “Water Buries, Too.”
Robechek arranged “These Green Mountains” to be “fun and dynamic rather than really challenging,” he said, preserving the melody while tweaking harmonies throughout.
The symphony premiered Robechek’s arrangement at its April concert at Barre Opera House and played it again at Highland Center for the Arts in Greensboro. This Saturday’s concert, at Montpelier Performing Arts Hub, will feature a string quartet and a brass chamber ensemble, and alumni will join in for the state song. The celebration also raises money for the scholarship fund.
All the concerts are — and always have been — directed by the orchestra’s founder, Bob Blais. The 60-year-old was not a conductor at all in 2001, he said, but a cellist playing and soloing in northeast orchestras such as the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra and the Boston Civic Symphony.
He was also giving cello lessons in Montpelier. When the mother of a budding violinist expressed her reluctance to drive her son every week to Vermont Youth Orchestra rehearsals in Colchester, Blais agreed to found the Green Mountain Youth Symphony. It now has three levels of orchestras — Repertory, Concert and Senior — and about 50 participants. This year, it launched Prelude, a beginning strings program for 7- to 10-year-olds.
Blais was planning on retiring after 25 years — it seemed a good time, he said — but had second thoughts.
“The world is a scary place right now, and this is a time every week when kids get together and they’re thinking about music. I don’t think I want to take that away from these guys right now,” he said. His dedication to the students has led to a special pleasure: premiering work by one whom he taught for seven years.
For Robechek, Blais was “an incredibly skilled musician who positioned himself as kind and forgiving but also demanded the best out of his students.”
Now, the composer said, “It’s cool to be on the other end of it.” ➆
This article appears in May 13 • 2026.
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