Clinician Detail

Using Chamber Music to Fast-track Your Band or Orchestra to a Winning Performance!

Clinic Synopsis:

Teaching in a more intimate musical setting, it is simply easier, faster and more effective to teach a trio, quartet, quintet etc. Being a part of a performance in contrast to a part of a section. The significance of 1 versus 1 of 60. Awareness of how a composition functions at a higher individual set of skills. In a simpler way, teaching students how to musically connect with others! Learn how to apply what is taught in chamber music to larger performing organizations.

Leroy Osmon - Biographical Information

Dr. Leroy Osmon (B.S., M.M., D.M.A.) is an internationally-known composer/conductor/educator who is presently living in Merida, Yucatan. His published compositions number more than 125 and are represented by seven publishers in the United States, Mexico, England, and The Netherlands. For more than twenty years, Osmon has worked as an advisor/consultant to the University of Yucatan (UADY) Orquesta de Camara. Osmon receives commissions for all music genres and he has received the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Standard Music Award for Composition 23 times and the Medallion La Ville De Contrexeville (Contrexeville, France) twice. His works have been performed at every major music conference in the United States. His music has been performed as well in Europe, Australia, Japan, Israel, India and Mexico. He has received 11 Grammy List Nominations: 2004, 2008, 2019, and 2020. For 23 consecutive years, Osmon has had a work performed at the prestigious Midwest International Band and Orchestra Convention in Chicago, Illinois. In January 2008, Leroy Osmon was nominated for both a Pulitzer Prize and the University of Louisville Grawemeer Award for Music composition for Zeraim from the Book of Ruth. In 2021, Dr. Osmon was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his composition Charuhas: Sinfonia Concertante for 10 Musicians.

Amaury Leo´n - Biographical Information

In 2007, Amaury Léon began his composition studies at the UNAY (school of Music, Merida, Yucatan, Mexico). In 2012 he studied tuba, which would later lead him to experiment and play with trumpet and euphonium. In 2013 he traveled to music workshops to the states of Iowa, Texas and the city of Chicago in the United States, as well as Oaxaca, Mexico. Also in 2013 he founded Alebrije, an ensemble of winds, where he composed more than 30 chamber works. In that year he joined Tumaka ´t a contemporary dance, as composer and wrote music for children and adults. In 2014 Amaury initiates the electronic music project "wirowero,” which remains active to this day and with two Ep's in his repertoire as well as various singles. In 2015 he composed Luna, a piece in memory of maestro Luis Luna. The following year Amaury did a national tour that premieres a major work for symphonic band titled Human 21.7 with a FORCASZ grant. 2017 bring a major project of composing music for "Lunas, Women who walk under water,” that same year, Amaury Léon has his first works recorded in the USA on the album "The Music of Leroy Osmon Vol. 7", with support of Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville.. This CD received 2 Grammy Entry List nominations. In 2019, once again, Amaury Léon composes a work for the faculty at TTU titled Bocanada for 10 musicians. In 2020 this CD receives 3 Grammy Entry List nominations and Bocanada receives the “Best New Chamber Work in Print” award in Europe.He has premiered works as part of the acclaimed hacienda Xcanatun Chamber Music Series, performed by members of the Symphony Orchestra of Yucatan. In the Spring of 2023 Amaury composed a symphonic band work titled “blue underworld” as part of the Eddie Green Foundation Commission Project. This work was premiered by the University of Houston Symphonic Band. Amaury Léon´s music can be found on the Texas UIL-PML.Amaury Léon was a composition student of Dr. Leroy Osmon

Kenneth Booker - Biographical Information

Ken Booker grew up in Nederland, Texas, just a few miles from Bridge City. He began his music study at Lamar University in Beaumont, also nearby. At Lamar, he began the formal study of composition with Paul Holmes. He continued to study with Michael Horvit at the University of Houston, then at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied with Donald Grantham, Dan Welcher, Karl Korte and Russell Pinkston. He earned a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree from UT in 1997.?Dr. Booker has since worked as a music educator. Most of his education career was at the Awty International School in Houston, Texas, at Lee College in Baytown, Texas. He retired in 2022.He has remained active as a composer, having written music for voice, instrumental chamber music, music for orchestra and for concert band. In recent years, he has been writing in jazz and rock idioms. His works have been published by Avalon Press, Echelon Press and Print Music Source. His Houston-based rock group, Phthalo Blue, released a single in September of 2023, with an album coming soon.

Gabe Musella - Biographical Information

Gabe Musella serves as UIL Assistant Music Director in Austin, Texas. Prior to his current position he taught for 30 years in Texas where his bands earned UIL Sweepstakes Awards in 8 different Varsity and Non-Varsity categories, performed at The Midwest Clinic and MFA National Concert Festival, and placed as finalists in TMEA Honor Band and at the UIL State Marching Contest. While at Spring HS, the band program was designated a Grammy Signature School, a Houston Symphony Orchestra Residency School, and was featured in THE INSTRUMENTALIST. Spring Band ensembles earned five invitations to perform at The Midwest Clinic between 2008 and 2016. 

Mr. Musella is an active composer and arranger whose works for band, choir, jazz ensemble, orchestra, percussion, and chamber ensembles have been performed at The Midwest Clinic, PASIC, WIBC, the Music For All National Festival, TMEA, TBA, and other conferences throughout the country and abroad. His works have been premiered by The United States Air Force Band, the TMEA All State Jazz Ensemble, the ATSSB All State Band, and ensembles at the University of Texas-El Paso, Texas Tech University, and the University of Houston. 

Gabe received the Meritorious Achievement Award from The Texas Bandmasters Association and the Specs Excellence in Music Education Award from The Houston Symphony Orchestra. He holds a BM in Composition and a MM in Conducting, both from Texas Tech University where he studied with James Sudduth, Keith Bearden, and Mary Jeane van Appledorn. His memberships include ASCAP, ABA, TMEA, TBA, TMAA, Phi Beta Mu, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, and he serves as Chamber Coordinator for the Music For All National Concert Festival. He is currently President of the Foundation for Music Education, and he has been on the staff of the Texas Tech Band and Orchestra Camp since 1985. Gabe and his wife, Alice, are very proud of their son Alex, who has earned degrees from Texas A & M – Corpus Christi and Sam Houston State University.

Éloïse Daoust - Biographical Information

E´loi¨se Daoust, born in 2006, is a French-Canadian composer, pianist and violinist. Throughout the years, she has earned multiple awards and scholarships, such as the “Anne Eagleston Trophy” for composition at the Kiwanis Music Festival, several scholarships with the Ontario Registered Music Teachers Association (ORMTA), and a trophy and masterclass with the legendary Gary Graffman from the Steinway Piano Competition.

Éloïse Daoust has also had the chance to perform for renowned artists such as Carson Becke, Fre´de´ric Lacroix, Richard Raymond, and Christopher Norton, amongst others. In the summer of 2023, she completed her ARCT piano exam with the Royal Conservatory of Music, earning herself an outstanding 95%.

E´loi¨se started studying composition with Dr. Leroy Osmon in September 2022, experimenting with and developing her harmonic language and color palette along the way.