Everything Band Podcast
Adrian Gordon is an internationally performed composer and seasoned music educator and currently serves as the director of orchestras at Providence Day School in Charlotte, NC. In addition to teaching, Adrian is the founder of Leap Year Music Publishing, which publishes string music for elementary, middle, and high school ensembles. His compositions appear on the Florida, Texas, Maryland, and Georgia Orchestra Association Music Performance Assessment Lists. His compositions are distributed through J.W. Pepper and have been performed throughout the world. Learn more at .
info_outline Episode 207 - Sixto MontesinosEverything Band Podcast
Dr. Sixto F. Montesinos Jr. is assistant professor of music and head of instrumental studies at Saint Mary’s College of California in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is an active Mexican-American conductor, flutist, music educator, and scholar researching new and effective ways to strengthen Mexican-American relations through the study and performance of music. These include overcoming stereotypes as well as Mexican, LGBTQ+, and LatinX representation in the field of music education, repertoire, and performance He is the artistic director of the Saint Mary's College Jazz Band as well as its...
info_outline Episode 206 - Vu NguyenEverything Band Podcast
Vu Nguyen is the Director of Wind Ensembles and Conducting at the University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA. Prior to his appointment at the University of Connecticut, he served as the Director of Bands at the University of Indianapolis, was a conductor of the Wind Ensemble at Washington University in St. Louis, and was a visiting conductor of the Indiana University Concert Band. He began his career teaching in the public schools of San Ramon, CA. Dr. Nguyen has conducted throughout the western United States and in Japan. He maintains an active schedule as a clinician and has served as guest...
info_outline Episode 205 - John WojciechowskiEverything Band Podcast
Saxophonist John Wojciechowski is originally from Detroit and has spent the last 18 years performing and teaching in Chicago. In addition to leading his own groups, he has performed or recorded with The Chicago Jazz Orchestra, The Chicago Jazz Ensemble, The Woody Herman Orchestra, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Clark Terry, Charlie Haden, and Kurt Elling among many others. John was also a third place finalist in the 1996 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. John has appeared on dozens of recordings as a sideman, and has two recordings as a...
info_outline Episode 204 - Josh Johnson (w/ host Jake Walker)Everything Band Podcast
Joshua Johnson currently serves as the Associate Director of Bands at Traughber Junior High in Oswego, Illinois. Prior to coming to Oswego, Josh served as Director of Bands at North Kirkwood Middle School and Associate Director of Bands in Kirkwood, Missouri. Joshua attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he received his Bachelor of Music Education Degree with Honors. During his time at Illinois, he was a member of the Illinois Wind Symphony, the Marching Illini, the University of Illinois Black Chorus, and many other university ensembles. Josh studied Oboe with Professor...
info_outline Episode 203 - Karen FanninEverything Band Podcast
Karen Fannin is Professor, Director of Bands, and Interim Director of the School of Music at the University of Nebraska at Omaha where she conducts the Symphonic Wind Ensemble, teaches undergraduate and graduate conducting, instructs courses in music education, and provides leadership for all aspects of the UNO band program. Previously, Dr. Fannin served as Director of Bands and Department Chair at Hendrix College. While in Arkansas, Dr. Fannin also held the position of Music Director and Conductor of the Little Rock Wind Symphony. A native of Iowa, Dr. Fannin began her teaching career...
info_outline Episode 202 - Mary CogswellEverything Band Podcast
Mary Cogswell is the current president of the South Dakota Bandmasters Association, the editor of the Beginning Band Adaptable series, and a long time beginning band teacher. If you teach beginners, this is the episode for you!
info_outline Episode 201 - Kenneth CollinsEverything Band Podcast
Biography Capt. Kenneth C. Collins, a native of Reno, Nevada, entered the Navy in 1989 and attended recruit training in San Diego, California. Upon completion of Musician "A" school, he served as a percussionist in fleet bands in Guam and Newport, Rhode Island. His first assignment upon receiving a commission as a limited duty officer bandmaster in 1998 was as the ceremonial band leader and associate conductor of the U.S. Navy Band in Washington, D.C., and shortly thereafter an assignment as the assistant director of the U.S. Naval Academy Band in Annapolis, Maryland. Collins served as the...
info_outline Episode 200 - Matthew MaslankaEverything Band Podcast
Matthew Maslanka is David Maslanka’s second son and the primary caretaker of David’s music. Born in New York City in 1982, he grew up listening to his father composing at the piano. From the age of 10, Matthew started helping out by making photocopies of scores and dubbing cassette tapes for David to send to conductors interested in the music. At 12, Matthew discovered the delights of engraving music with a computer. By 14, he was skilled enough to handle the preparation of his father’s music and proceeded to engrave virtually every work from that point forward. In this way, he...
info_outline Episode 199 - Gary GreenEverything Band Podcast
Gary Green is Director of Bands Emeritus at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, Florida. Prior to joining the faculty at UM, Gary served for ten years as Director of Bands at the University of Connecticut. Gary joins the show today to discuss the important life lessons that music teachers need to know to build a culture of excellence. Gary Green and was influential in commissioning and recording new works for winds and percussion which included Symphony No. 3 by David Maslanka and A Cornfield in July and The River by William Penn. Urban Requiem by Michael Colgrass was...
info_outlineJonathan Newman is a well-known composer and is the Director of Composition & Coordinator of New Music at the Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, Virginia.
Topics:
- Jonathan’s background, how playing the trombone has helped his career, and important teachers in his life.
- How writing in a variety of genres helps him stay focused and the importance of exploring a plurality of styles as a composer.
- BCM International and how four friends found a way to have a booth at Midwest and launch their careers.
- Being a pioneer as a self-published composer in the early 2000’s and how a job at Boosey & Hawkes helped him learn how to publish his own music.
- Jonathan’s newest work Pi‘ilani and Ko‘olauan.
Links:
- Jonathan Newman, Composer
- BCM International
- Newman: OK, Feel Good
- Newman: Blow it Up, Start Again
- Newman: Pi’ilani and Ko’alauan
- Britten: War Requiem
- Bach: Komm, süsser Tod
- Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier (Final Trio)
Biography:
Jonathan Newman composes music rich with rhythmic drive and intricate sophistication, creating broadly colored musical works that incorporate styles of pop, blues, jazz, folk, and funk into otherwise classical models. Trained as a pianist, trombonist, and singer, his work is informed by an upbringing performing in orchestras, singing in jazz choirs, playing in marching bands, and accompanying himself in talent shows. From opera to bubblegum pop, Newman delivers a new perspective on American concert music.
Recent work includes Mass, a large-scale project with texts by poet Victoria Chang which premiered in 2018 with The Choir of Trinity Wall Street as part of their Mass Reimaginings commissioning program. In 2016 he was appointed Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras Composer-in-Residence; work with CYSO included performances of Metropolitan, Tree, and 3 O’Clock Mix, Chicago’s 2016 Ear Taxi Festival, and the commissions for Meridian and Blow It Up, Start Again—which have subsequently been performed by orchestras worldwide, including the Minnesota Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony, the 2015 Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the 2015 BBC Proms.
Other recent commissions include Prayers of Steel for Chicago’s Gaudete Brass (recorded on Cedille Records, 2017) and These Inflected Tentacles for chamber quartet. Newman’s ensemble transcriptions include arrangements of Beck, George Harrison, Puccini, Sufjan Stevens, Eric Whitacre, Led Zeppelin, and electronica premiered at the 2005 Lincoln Center Festival and recorded on Acoustica: Alarm Will Sound Performs Aphex Twin (Cantaloupe Records). As a MacDowell Fellow, he began work on an opera based on the 1962 cult horror film Carnival of Souls, in collaboration with playwright Gary Winter. He is currently working with Winter on an imaginary ballet suite for the Florida State University Wind Orchestra based on the Hawaiian story of Pi’ilani and Ko’olau.
Wind and educational ensembles around the world frequently perform from his large catalog of works, including Blow It Up, Start Again (transcription for winds), Symphony No. 1, My Hands Are a City—a wind ensemble consortium commission based on themes of mid-century American Beat Culture, Sowing Useful Truths, commissioned by the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, and Moon by Night, 2003 winner of the NBA/Merrill Jones Composition Award.
Born in 1972, Newman received the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and holds degrees from Boston University’s School for the Arts, where he studied composition with Richard Cornell and Charles Fussell and conducting with Lukas Foss, and The Juilliard School, where he studied with composers John Corigliano and David Del Tredici and conducting with Miguel Harth-Bedoya. At Juilliard, his collaborative works for dance enjoyed multiple performances at The Juilliard Theater, Alice Tully Hall, P.S. 122, and Dance Theater Workshop. His early training includes Boston University Tanglewood Institute and the Aspen Music Festival where he studied with composers George Tsontakis and Bernard Rands. His works have been recorded on Avian, BCM, Brain Music, Cantaloupe, Cedille, Klavier, Mark Custom, Naxos, Potenza, and Summit Records.
Newman is a founding member of the composer-consortium BCM International: four stylistically-diverse composers dedicated to enriching the repertoire with exciting works for mediums often mired in static formulas. BCM recorded two albums: BCM Saves the World (Mark Custom Records, 2002) and BCM Men of Industry (BCM Records, 2004). He resides in Virginia, where he serves as Director of Composition & Coordinator of New Music at Shenandoah Conservatory.