Episode 167 - Cheryl Floyd

Cheryl Floyd has taught middle school band in Austin, TX for over 30 years and is one of the most highly regarded middle school band directors in the country. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors and has commissioned or been part of the consortium for 14 works for band.

Topics:

• Cheryl's background growing up in Texas, going to Baylor University and starting her career as a teacher.
• The importance of encouraging students and giving them the type of positive feedback that keeps them playing.
• The background stories of a few of the 14 works that she has been a part of commissioning.
• Peer leadership in the middle school band.
• Teaching in Texas and the power of sound to sight teaching.
• A general discussion about teaching beginners and middle school band.
• An anecdote about George Steinbrenner.

Links:

• Cheryl Floyd at Music for All
• 204 Progressive Sight Reading Tunes
• Bernstein: Suite from "Candide"
• Mozart: Serenade for 13 Winds in B-flat major, K. 361 "Gran Partita"

Biography:

Cheryl Floyd completed her twenty-fifth year as Director of Bands at Hill Country Middle School in Austin, Texas in May 2017.  The Hill Country Middle School Band is recognized as one if the exemplary middle school programs in the nation. Prior to her tenure at Hill Country, she served as Director of Bands at Murchison Middle School, also in Austin, for eight years.  Musical organizations under her leadership have consistently been sited for musical excellence at both local contests and national invitational festivals.  Mrs. Floyd is recognized nationally for her educational and musical vision and commitment at the middle school level.  In 1990 her Murchison program was the recipient of the coveted Sudler Cup Award presented to exceptional middle school band programs by the John Philip Sousa Foundation. The Hill Country Middle School Band has performed at the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic in 1998 and again in 2006, Music For All’s National Concert Band Festival in Indianapolis (March 2012),and most recently at the Western International Band Clinic (November 2014) under Mrs. Floyd’s direction.

Mrs. Floyd routinely serves as a conductor on the University of Texas at Austin band camp faculty and has been a member of summer music faculties at Music For All's Summer Symposium, Arkansas Tech University, Baylor University, Texas Lutheran University Stephen F. Austin University, University of Colorado at Boulder, and the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.  She enjoys an active schedule as an adjudicator, clinician, author and guest conductor throughout the United States, having served as one of the first women guest conductors of the United States Navy Band in Washington, D.C. in September, 1998.

Cheryl Floyd was the recipient of the Texas Bandmasters Association Exemplary Middle School Band Program Citation and she appeared on the cover of the May 2005 Instrumentalist magazine which contained a featured article on the Hill Country Middle School band program.

In 2003, Mrs. Floyd was elected to the American Bandmasters’ Association. She is the fifth female member of this 225 member organization and was the first middle school band director to be chosen for ABA membership. She serves on that organization’s selection committee for the prestigious Sousa/ABA/Ostwald Composition Competition.

For nearly three decades, she has maintained a keen interest in commissioning new works for concert band and has collaborated with such internationally recognized composers as Frank Ticheli, Cajun Folk Songs, Shenandoah, Bob Margolis, Renaissance Fair, Dana Wilson, Sang!, Ron Nelson, Courtly Airs and Dances, Steven Barton, Hill Country Flourishes, Chris Tucker, Twilight in the Wilderness. Catherine McMichael, Cape Breton Postcard, Undertow, by John Mackey Spangled Heavens by Donald Grantham, a consortium commission for TMEA's MS Region 18 by Viet Cuong entitled Diamond Tide, and most recently, Sparkle by Scott McAllister.. The works generated by these ongoing projects have been widely acclaimed as being among the most significant works for young band.

A 1980 graduate of Baylor University, Mrs. Floyd has also done graduate work at the University of Texas with Paula Crider, Robert Duke and Karl Kraber. 

Since 1985 she has served as co-principal flute with the Austin Symphonic Band and in this capacity has performed at the Midwest International Band and Orchestra Clinic in 1989, 1997 and 2007, the American Bandmasters Association in 1993 and 2006 and before the Texas Music Educators Association and Texas Bandmasters Association on numerous occasions. She is a member of ABA, TMEA, TBA, and Phi Beta Mu.

In 2016 she was named a Yamaha Master Educator, one of only 18 in the nation. As such she is positioned to appear throughout the United States as a conductor, clinician and educator representing Yamaha. She annually serves as an evaluator for the Music For All National Concert Band Festival and was recently appointed to the Middle School Educational team for the Music For All Summer Symposium. Looming on the horizon is a book to be published by GIA Publications entitled “Middle School My Way.”
​
Paramount in her life is her musical family including her husband, Richard Floyd, State Director of Music Emeritus at the University of Texas and their son, Richard Weston, who holds a trombone performance degree from the University of Texas and is pursuing his musical career in Los Angeles.