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St. Olaf to host students from 74 schools for Festival of Bands

By David Gonnerman '90
November 10, 2004

The St. Olaf Festival of Bands, a day of rehearsals and instruction for select area high school students, will conclude with a concert at 4 p.m. Saturday in Skoglund Center Auditorium. The concert will include performances by the St. Olaf Band, the Norseman Band and 160 musicians selected from 74 area high schools. The guest conductor for the event is composer Mark Camphouse, professor of music and director of bands at Radford University in Virginia. The concert is free and open to the public.

Three works by Camphouse will be conducted by the composer, including "Yosemite Autumn," "Three London Miniatures" and "Canzon, Fugetta, and Hymn." In addition, the concert will feature St. Olaf Associate Professor of Music and Conductor of the Norseman Band Paul Niemisto as tuba soloist with the St. Olaf Band on Donald Haddad's "Suite for Tuba." The St. Olaf Band will also play "Metropolis Dawn: the Construction of the Empire State Building, 1930-31," a new work by St. Olaf Band member Christopher Renk '05 that won the Cal Tech Band Composition Competition last spring. John Philip Sousa's popular march, "Hands Across the Sea," will be played by the high school Festival Band in observance of the sesquicentennial of Sousa's birth in 1854.

Camphouse has served as a guest conductor, clinician and lecturer throughout North America and Europe. He has composed music for the U.S. Marine Corps and Army bands in Washington, the Florida Bandmasters Association and some of America's finest college and high school wind bands. His many awards include winning the 1991 National Band Association composition contest and being named runner-up in both the 1986 and 1988 American Bandmasters Association Ostwald competitions. A member of the American Bandmasters Association, Camphouse serves as coordinator for the National Band Association's Young Composer Mentor Project.

Contact David Gonnerman at 507-786-3315 or gonnermd@stolaf.edu.