While overseas in Germany, a jazz musician turned Navy sailor acquired a stereo. This stereo voyaged across the Atlantic Ocean and arrived in the picturesque New England suburb of Wethersfield, Conn., located just outside Hartford.

“Music was always a part of our house,” Robert Ambrose, BC ’90, said.

Of all the new sights, smells, and sounds that confronted 3-year-old Ambrose, he specifically remembers the sounds of the stereo his father had brought back from Europe, as the spinning records crooned sentimental tunes. He and his father would sit in front of it, swaying to the seemingly endless melodies.

This early experience with music would prove to be the first of many for Ambrose, who is now the director of bands at Georgia State University and a world-renowned wind ensemble conductor.

Ambrose has always felt greatly supported by his parents in his musical career. While he never saw his father’s jazz career in action, Ambrose’s father would speak to the myriad of his musical endeavors as a student at Boston College, which Ambrose would later attend himself.

“They provided probably what must go down in history as the greatest support network ever,” Ambrose said. “They are just fantastic parents.”

Ambrose attended his local high school in Wethersfield, which had a cutting-edge and all-encompassing guitar program. But formal guitar lessons gave way to rambunctious rock band jams and sessions in the recording studio with his fellow classmates turned bandmates in the late afternoon hours of the languid days of the 1980s.

When it came time to submit his college applications, Ambrose applied to five East Coast schools—University of Connecticut, University of Hartford, University of Vermont, Boston University, and Boston College. His future was unnervingly uncertain career-wise, and Ambrose hoped that the push to attend college would point him in the right direction.

“Back then, the idea of the gap year didn’t exist—no one ever did that,” he said.

After Ambrose received his high school diploma in 1986, the limiting possibilities were three-pronged—college, work, or the military. He acknowledges now that taking some time to collect himself and confront the coming years with a clear head would have been helpful, but Ambrose has no qualms about the trajectory his life has taken since his decision to attend BC.

In addition to BC’s prestigious reputation, Ambrose felt a personal connection to the college—his childhood had been peppered with autumn road trips into Chestnut Hill to cheer on the Eagles in Alumni Stadium.