Parallel Practices Make Perfect

While many attorneys take up hobbies like golf, running, or gardening to decompress from the stress of the day-to-day, David Rintoul’s trombone led him to a whole new and colorful chapter of his life.

“I actually took a 30-year break,” he says of the instrument. Like many teens, he stopped playing when he finished high school to focus on other things. It was his own kids, then aged 14 and 16, that got him back into it. “They were appearing in a production of The Threepenny Opera, which I knew very well—I listened to it a lot in childhood—and it has a fantastic trombone part. So I decided to see if I could get my lip in shape to play in the pit orchestra. I had nine weeks, but I managed to do it. And it was such a blast.”

From there Rintoul, an ERISA attorney in Wilton, plunged headlong into a second career that has put him in the pit and onstage in some wildly varied productions. “I started playing with the Wesleyan Orchestra, and I played with them for, I guess, six years—for as long as I was living up there,” recalls Rintoul, whose wife is a professional harpist. “Then I started playing in a big band. I recruited another lawyer to play who had been a trumpet player in military bands during the Vietnam War: Mickey Busca, who’s a lawyer out of New London. That was sort of fun, to get another lawyer involved.

“My kids’ teacher was conducting the Connecticut College orchestra, so my two kids, who both play cello, and I would drive to Connecticut College—I was living in Marlborough at the time—to play with the Connecticut College orchestra,” he continues.

Rintoul also had a stint with the Civic Orchestra of New Haven, but “the drive got a little long,” he says. Soon after, though, he took up with the American Chamber Orchestra. “I played a few productions of Gilbert and Sullivan,” he says. “And then there’s the rock thing.”

The “rock thing” is a project of which Rintoul is especially proud. “It’s an annual event called Wilton Rocks for Food,” he says. “We go and play fun music: ‘25 or 6 to 4,’ ‘Late in the Evening,’ The Doors’ ‘Touch Me,’ ‘Live and Let Die,’ ‘Superstition’ and a bunch of Stevie Wonder, Tina Turner’s version of ‘Proud Mary,’ ‘Love Shack.’ … They’re wonderful musicians, and all of this great music, and you’re raising all of this money.”

Rintoul estimates Wilton Rocks for Food has raised nearly a million dollars in total. “That’s so rewarding,” Rintoul says. “It’s really a wonderful thing to be part of.”

When Rintoul isn’t playing the hits of his youth, big band jazz or the works of Mozart, Wagner or Sibelius, he likes to spend time in the kitchen as an accomplished baker. “It’s another great mental vacation from work—part of keeping sane with the practice of law,” he says. “I’ve won prizes for my brownies and gluten-free desserts at county fairs. There’s this incredible carrot cake—it’s actually gluten and lactose free—but you would never know, I’ve been told, it’s so delicious.”

Since 2022, Rintoul has been balancing his law practice and trombone practice while working chiefly from home. “I started my own practice in March 2022, just really focusing on the ERISA stuff,” he says. “I was no good, working at home. I was terrible. I didn’t get anything done. It took me probably two months of the COVID [pandemic] to get my act together. But that made me realize that I could do it, and how great it was to spend more time with my wife.”