ALBANY MIDDLE SCHOOL APPLAUDS MR. ANTONIO'S OPUS.(ARTS-EVENTS)

Byline: JOSEPH DALTON STAFF WRITER

Every Monday and Wednesday at Albany's William S. Hackett Middle School, about 50 students arrive at 8 a.m. 40 minutes before classes begin. Toting flutes, clarinets, trombones and oboes in hard plastic cases, they cram into a basement classroom where the walls are a dingy aqua green and half the fluorescent lights have burned out.

Mozart and Beethoven, Miles Davis and Stevie Wonder look on benevolently from aging, unframed posters while John Antonio coaxes music out of the half-asleep players. As the band works on pieces by Tchaikovsky and Gliere, Antonio is at once conductor and teacher, cheerleader and taskmaster. And friend.

A graduate of Hackett himself, as well as of Albany High School and the College of Saint Rose, Antonio led his final concert on May 13 after 33 years as a teacher in the Albany City School District. A youthful 54 years old, he's hardly going into retirement in any traditional sense. He'll continue teaching through his work as a percussion coach with the Empire State Youth Orchestra, plans to devote time to hiking and camping, and hopes to get his own chops as a percussionist back into shape.

But for several generations of students, some of whom have gone on to careers as performers or teachers, and for colleagues seemingly …