Composer Festival
Composer Festival Registration
The San Diego Winds Composer Festival is designed to provide high-caliber ensembles with an exceptional and inspiring musical experience.
The festival offers two levels of participation:
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Festival Groups ($325): Perform their selections and receive an engaging on-stage clinic.
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Premier Groups ($1,000): Participate in a 2-hour workshop at your school with the guest conductor and earn a performance slot in Saturday evening’s Premier Concert (at Mission Hills High School Theater).
The Premier Concert is an extraordinary highlight, where Premier groups perform for a large audience, including their peers and guests, making for an unforgettable evening.
Festival Groups receive:
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Valuable interaction and guidance from an acclaimed composer
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A memorable concert celebrating outstanding wind band repertoire
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A 45-minute performance slot that includes an on-stage clinic
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A digital recording of their performance and clinic
We hope you’ll consider including this unique and enriching opportunity in your program’s plans for the year. Registration is now open, and spots for the Premier groups are limited.
For additional information, please feel free to contact:
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Eric Weirather: rbvdir@gmail.com
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Chris Coughlin: christopher.coughlin@smusd.org
About the Composer Festival
The San Diego Winds is dedicated to promoting the performance of high quality Wind Band literature. As such the San Diego Winds wanted to create a festival where students were able to not only perform high quality music but do work on that music with the composers themselves and world class conductors. It is from this foundation the composer festival was born.
From there it was decided that in order to celebrate a diverse body of literature the composer festival would alternate annually between living and deceased composers. During the years featuring a living composer's music, the composer themselves would be brought into San Diego to work with the students. In the years featuring the music of deceased composers, an expert conductor who specializes in their music is brought in to work with the students. This format has resulted in major opportunities for the music students of San Diego who have now had the opportunity to work with several amazing composers and conductors.
History of the Composer Festival
Since its inception in 2010 the Composer Festival was welcomed some of the top Composers and Conductors in the Wind Band medium including:
David Maslanka (2010)
Larry Curtis (2011)
Samuel Hazo (2012)
Anthony Maiello (2013)
Gregg Hanson (2014)
David Gillingham (2015)
Col. Lowell Graham (2016)
Dr. Thomas Lee (2017)
Brian Balmages (2018)
Gary Green (2019)
Rossano Galante (2020)
John Carnahan (2022)
Dr. Peter Boonshaft (2023)
Michael Markowski (2024)
Rossano Galante (2025)
Richard Saucedo (2026)
