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J. Robert Hanson, Jo Ann Polley to be featured in St. Olaf Band concert Sunday, March 11

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March 7, 2001

NORTHFIELD, Minn. ? The St. Olaf Band will feature a guest conductor and a St. Olaf College faculty soloist at its annual spring concert Sunday, March 11.

J. Robert Hanson, instructor of music at St. Olaf College and a long-time faculty member at Concordia College, Moorhead, Minn., will conduct the band, and clarinetist Jo Ann Polley will be featured soloist. The St. Olaf Band director, Timothy Mahr, is on sabbatical leave this semester.

The band will perform at 7:30 p.m. Sunday in Skoglund Center Auditorium. The concert is free and open to the public.

The concert program includes works by Ralph Vaughan Williams, J. S. Bach and John Philip Sousa, as well as a piece featuring Polley on clarinet. In addition, Hanson will conduct the band in its performance of a work he composed and dedicated to Miles "Mity" Johnson, conductor emeritus of the St. Olaf Band.

The band will perform "Toccata Marziale" by Williams; "Variations on a Scandinavian Sailor?s Song" by Hanson; "Fantasia in G Major" by Bach; "Concertino, Op. 26" by Carl Maria von Weber, featuring Jo Ann Polley; "Music for Prague 1968" by Karel Husa; and "Semper Fidelis ? Always Faithful March" by Sousa.

The St. Olaf Band is the oldest musical organization at St. Olaf College. From its earliest days it has toured nationally and internationally, and in 1906 it became the first American collegiate band to make a European concert tour, with a four-week, 30-concert tour to Norway. Since then it has toured several times in Norway, Great Britain and Europe, as well as throughout the United States.

In 1978, 1980 and 1984 the band conducted month-long study programs in England, highlighted by joint concerts with the Royal Military School of Music-Kneller Hall Fanfare Trumpets. The St. Olaf Band is the only American college or university band ever to play in concert with the Kneller Hall musicians, who perform for British royalty on all state occasions. In 1991 the St. Olaf Band celebrated its centennial by again touring the British Isles.

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In 1995 the band performed for King Harald and Queen Sonja of Norway when they visited St. Olaf College, and performed with His Majesty?s King?s Guard Band. In 1996 the band returned to Norway for an 18-day tour, and last spring the band returned to England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales for a tour which included joint performances with the Wind Ensemble of the Royal Irish Academy of Music and the Band of Her Majesty?s Grenadier Guards.

Guest Conductor Hanson is a graduate of Concordia College, Moorhead. He earned a master of arts degree in music education, a master of fine arts in trumpet performance and a Ph.D in composition from the University of Iowa. He taught at the University of Iowa and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee before joining the music faculty at Concordia College in 1966. He conducted the Concordia College Band for eight years and was founder and conductor of the Concordia College Orchestra from 1967 until his retirement in 1995.

Hanson also conducted the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra from 1974 to 1990, when the ensemble earned four ASCAP awards for Adventuresome Programming of Contemporary Music.

An accomplished trumpet player who teaches trumpet at St. Olaf, Hanson has an extensive background in performance, including playing principal trumpet with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. He has written works for orchestra, band and other instrumental and vocal ensembles, and continues to be active as a composer. Recent compositions include commissioned works for the Minnesota All State Orchestra, the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies, the Twin Cities Suburban Festival Orchestra, the Grand Forks Central and Red River High School Bands and six anthems for three churches in Willmar, Minn. Hanson and his wife, Lois, live in Minneapolis.

Polley holds a bachelor of arts in instrumental music education from St. Olaf, a master of music in clarinet performance from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in performance/music theory/literature from Michigan State University.

She performs frequently in solo and chamber music recitals on clarinet, basset horn and bass clarinet, and is in demand as a clinician. She is a founder and member of WindWorks, a professional woodwind quintet. She has performed with the Minneapolis Pops Orchestra, the Minnesota Opera Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Plymouth Music Series and numerous ballet and Broadway show orchestras. She serves as north central chair of the International Clarinet Association and is a board member of the newly established Fairview Arts Medicine Center. At St. Olaf she teaches clarinet and chamber music in addition to conducting the St. Olaf Philharmonia, a 75-member symphony orchestra.

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St. Olaf College prepares students to become responsible citizens of the world, fostering development of mind, body and spirit. A four-year, coeducational liberal arts college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), St. Olaf has a student enrollment of 2,950 and a full-time faculty complement of approximately 300. It is one of Money Guide?s top 100 "elite values in college education today," and it leads the nation?s colleges in percentage of students who study abroad.

Contact Michael Cooper at 507-786-3315 or cooperm@stolaf.edu.