From July Fourth Weekend to Labor Day Weekend at Saratoga Race Course, just before the horses load into the gate, a single trumpet call cuts through the chatter of the grandstand. It’s the Call to Post, a tradition as old as thoroughbred racing itself.

For the past few years, that sound has come from Carson Gambaro ’22, an alumnus and four-year member of the Syracuse University Marching Band (SUMB). He plays it alongside the person who taught him almost everything he knows about music: his dad, Tony Gambaro.

Carson picked up the trumpet in elementary school, discovering along the way that he’d been born with perfect pitch, a gift he says he’d feel guilty not using to its fullest.

His musicality helped point him toward Syracuse, though not because he had a clear plan.

“I knew there was a lot of potential there,” he says, and joining the SUMB felt like a way to find out what that was.

Lessons and Memories From Marching Band

As a band member, pre-season camp meant 12-hour days, which bonded him not just with his trumpet section but with the entire ensemble.

During his freshman season, Syracuse played in the Camping World Bowl in Orlando and the marching band was there. Gambaro remembers the trip fondly, including riding Disney World’s Space Mountain twice to make up for missing it on a high school trip.

More than any single moment, though, the marching band taught him how to perform with what he calls “nonstop passion,” a lesson that has followed him well beyond his playing days on the field.

During the pandemic, while running solo workouts on the practice track behind South Campus, Gambaro reconnected with another lifelong passion: track and field, a sport he’d competed in throughout high school.

Paired with his time at the Newhouse School of Public Communications, his interest in athletics propelled him toward a career in sports broadcasting. He’s now an announcer who covers track and field regularly and has done play-by-play at prestigious events including the Penn Relays (the oldest running meet in America), New Balance Nationals and the New York State Championships. He served as a color commentator for American Grant Fisher’s 5,000-meter indoor world record (12:44.09) at Boston University in 2025.

Gambaro also launched his own interview podcast, “In Full Stride,” and engaged in networking opportunities with top broadcasters at the USA Track and Field National Championships in New York City in July.

A New Tradition at Saratoga

But it’s Saratoga where two of Gambaro’s worlds, music and sport, collide most visibly.

Growing up not far from the track in Saratoga Springs, he wasn’t especially familiar with it as a kid. That changed when his father, a professional trumpet player, was asked to take over Call to Post duties from the track’s longtime bugler, Sam Grossman (known as Sam the Bugler), in 2022. Tony’s schedule meant he couldn’t cover every one of the meet’s roughly 40 racing days, so father and son began splitting the job.

What was supposed to be a primary-and-backup arrangement turned into something more during a sound check, when an audio engineer suggested they try playing together. The reaction from track marketing staff was immediate. Interviews, local news coverage and a new tradition were born almost overnight.

Now, the Gambaros take turns and sometimes combine playing the Call to Post before each of the day’s races. In between races, they entertain the crowd, taking requests from wedding songs to rap hits.

Off the clock, the father-son duo also perform together in Tony’s 10-piece group, Ten Most Wanted, playing weddings, clubs, corporate events and in summer concert series around the Albany area.

What’s it like to work with his dad?

“It’s telepathic,” the younger Gambaro says. “We can look at each other and say a word or two before playing a song, and then we’ll just play it.”

Months could pass between bugling gigs, he says, and they still pick up exactly where they left off.