Moments before thoroughbreds bound out of the Pimlico gates and stride across the historic track, the triumphant ring of Justin Nurin’s bugle cuts through the crowd.
The progression of notes heralding the race, a tune known as “Call to the Post,” is familiar to the nimble fingers of the Annapolis native whose music has been accompanying horse races for eight years. However, playing the song Friday and Saturday for the 2024 Preakness will be his first time participating in Maryland’s highest-profile horse race.
“I’m as Maryland as they come. I grew up playing lacrosse, sailing — I put Old Bay on everything,” Nurin told The Baltimore Sun on a phone call Friday from the jockey room at Pimlico Race Course between bugle calls during Black-Eyed Susan Day events. “This is kind of the culmination of all of the horse racing that I’ve played for and being a Marylander. It all comes kind of together for the Preakness.”
Word of the opportunity came in late February when the event’s regular bugle player, Jari Villanueva, told Nurin, who often subs in for him, that he would be out of town during Preakness. Nurin was happy to pick up the reins.
Though Nurin, 45, now lives in Philadelphia, making it easier to commute to gigs across the East Coast, his passion for the instrument was born at Wiley H. Bates Middle School in Annapolis, he said.
He chose the instrument, in part, because it suited his short stature, he said, and soon enough was playing alongside the more experienced students at Annapolis High School. Nurin then went on to study music at The Peabody Institute in Baltimore.
The tune Nurin plays at Preakness is also known as “First Call.” It’s a military melody that plays before morning reveille and functions to gather all the bugle players together for the playing of the wake-up tune.
“It makes sense that it was adapted about 150 years ago into horse racing to assemble all the riders about 10 minutes before the beginning of the race,” Nurin said.
To raise the stakes even higher, Nurin plays the call simultaneously with his partner for Preakness weekend, the aptly named Christina Alegre, who is also stepping into her Preakness role as a substitute.
“It’s an actually kind of challenging bugle call,” said Alegre, who is from Northern Virginia. “The notes are very quick, especially at the beginning. They’re called triplets and that’s pretty hard to line up together. So, it’s challenging but I think we can do it.”
The duo can be spotted in red suit jackets, top hats and Maryland flag-patterned ties as they carry on the age-old horse racing tradition throughout the weekend.
