The Midwest Clinic Chat Rooms provide an arena where teachers will learn from and dialogue with expert practitioners. These brief ‘chats’ allow directors a forum for collaboration in a relaxed, intimate environment. The Chat Rooms have limited seating so attendance is granted on a first-come, first-served basis.
John Benzer
- Biographical Information
John Benzer retired, after twenty years as an Instrumental Music Education and University Bands Affiliate faculty member at the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music in 2020, where he taught undergraduate woodwind instrument pedagogy classes and band director methods classes, and assisted the performing ensembles. Through the music education department, he was the Student Teacher Coordinator and was very active in providing beginning teacher job placement in school districts throughout Texas. Currently, he is a full-time band clinician/consultant and adjudicator, and provides conceptual brass and woodwind instrumental pedagogy information—as well as woodwind instructional teaching videos—through johnbenzer.com. He continues to serve as the Texas Area and State Honor Band Adjudicator Coordinator.During his ten years as Director of Bands at Griffin Middle School in the Lewisville ISD, his Symphonic Band was named the Texas Class CC Middle School Honor Band in 1993 and 1997. In 1997, the Griffin Middle School Band Program was awarded the Sudler Silver Cup, the most prestigious international award to recognize junior high and middle school band programs of outstanding musical excellence.At the 1995 TBA Convention, Mr. Benzer was named “Texas Young Bandmaster of the Year.” He was inducted as a member of Phi Beta Mu in 2001, and was honored as the Distinguished Alumnus in Music Education through the UH Moores School of Music in 2012. Mr. Benzer is an active clinician, adjudicator and inservice presenter throughout Texas.