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Time:

Friday
December, 20, 2019
08:15 AM - 09:30 AM

Location:

Skyline Ballroom W375AB

Category

COLLEGE BAND

Conductor

Alexander Kaminsky

Performer Details

Performer Bio Synopsis

For over 100 years, VanderCook College of Music has focused exclusively on music teacher education. Our unique curriculum prepares the whole music educator, emphasizing performance as well as instructional methods. VanderCook’s degree programs offer a thorough, comprehensive course of study that prepares our students to teach band, orchestra, choir and general music at all levels. All students play in the band and orchestra, and they all sing in the choir. Every student develops competency on all of the brass, woodwind, string and percussion instruments along with piano, guitar, and voice. Our teacher training is rooted in collaborative music-making and hands-on, project-based learning in a conservatory-like atmosphere that equips graduates to meet the challenges of today's K-12 classrooms. VanderCook College of Music has been a part of the Midwest Clinic since its origin, sponsoring the very first clinic at a YWCA on the west side of Chicago. The VanderCook Symphonic Band has been invited to perform at every clinic every year since. In addition to wind and percussion majors, the band includes a number of choral and string music education majors performing on secondary instruments. The performers in the Symphonic Band represent VanderCook and its service to music education. Throughout the week of the Midwest Clinic, VanderCook students work as set-up and usher personnel, diligently giving attention to every detail. Their service to the Midwest Clinic is yet another important dimension of the comprehensive education degree that candidates receive at VanderCook College of Music.

VanderCook College of Music Symphonic Band

Conductor's Bio

Alexander Kaminsky was appointed Director of Bands and Associate Professor of Music at VanderCook College of Music in 2019 after a highly successful tenure at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. He holds degrees from the University of Florida and Indiana University, is active as an adjudicator, and is in demand as a guest conductor/clinician across the country. Throughout his 30-year career as a high school band director, Kaminsky’s ensembles consistently earned Superior ratings at all levels of evaluation. In addition to earning Superior ratings at the FBA State Concert Band Assessment for an unprecedented 23 consecutive years (the last 13 of those years being with both his first and second bands), he is the only director in the history of the Florida Bandmasters Association to have had three concert bands from one school earn straight Superior ratings at State, and he achieved this three times (2009, 2018 and 2019). Kaminsky’s bands have performed at notable state and national festivals and conferences, including twice at Carnegie Hall (2009 and 2018) and four times at the Midwest Clinic (2005, 2009, 2014, and 2018). His marching bands consistently placed in the Florida Marching Band State Championship Finals, winning consecutive FMBC State Championships (2013 and 2014, 2017 and 2018) as well as being named a finalist band at BOA regional competitions. Kaminsky is a ten-time recipient of the National Band Association’s Citation of Excellence and has been recognized with numerous achievement awards for education including Florida’s 2019 FMEA Secondary Music Educator of the Year Award, FBA Oliver Hobbs Award, FBA Andrew J. Crew Award, National Honor Roll’s Outstanding American Teacher, Nobel Educator of Distinction, Teacher of the Year, and is listed in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers. He is a Conn-Selmer Educational Clinician and is an elected member of the prestigious American Bandmasters Association and the American School Band Directors’ Association.

Additional Directors

Stacey Larson Dolan, Associate Director of Bands

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