Jazz Band On an Hour and a Half a Week
Clinic Synopsis:
This session will offer insights to instrumental music educators on effective ways to schedule, recruit, rehearse and retain a successful middle/high school extracurricular jazz program on limited time. It will
also offer recommendations on the latest references and resources available to assist directors in building and maintaining a jazz program.
Rich Stichler
- Biographical Information
Rich Stichler is in his 35th year in music education and retired as director of bands at Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe High School, Ft. Oglethorpe, Georgia in 2023. He was director of bands at Ridgeland High School, Rossville, Georgia from 1993 to 1999. Currently, he is an adjunct professor of Trombone and Director of the Jazz Bands at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Before relocating to the Chattanooga area, he taught band and orchestra in Arizona, California, and Nevada. Under his direction the LFO and Ridgeland High School Bands received consistent superior ratings for marching, concert, and jazz performances in Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. He served as GMEA District Seven Band Division chair and as the organizer of the GMEA All-State Jazz Ensemble.
He maintains a busy schedule as a professional trombonist and teacher in the Chattanooga and NW Georgia areas and has also freelanced and taught privately in Arizona, California, Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas, Nevada. He currently serves as associate director and trombonist for the Jericho Brass Band, Chattanooga, TN and is a member of the Premier Jazz Orchestra in East Tennessee. He was a member of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Marching Band, the 1986 Disneyland All-American College Band, and the 15th Air Force Band of the Golden West at March Air Force Base in California from 1987 to 1991.
He earned the B.Mus. degree from the University of Arizona and the M.M.Ed. degree and Ed.S. degree in educational technology from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Milas Yoes - Biographical Information
Milas Yoes is a devoted music educator who has worked in Texas, North Carolina, and Arizona for over forty years. He has taught in prisons, churches, schools, colleges, and union halls. For twenty-three years he was a Professor of Instrumental Music at Phoenix College. He was also band director at Fees MS, Powell JH, Chandler-Gilbert Community College, Arizona Western College, and Central Arizona College.
Mr. Yoes has been nominated three times by his students for a Grammy Music Educator Award. He was a quarterfinalist in 2016. Milas is responsible for starting more than a dozen new jazz bands in the Phoenix area from elementary to professional. His jazz bands have performed for I.A.J.E., American Federation of Musicians, and Super Bowl XXX. For nine years, Mr. Yoes distinguished himself as the creator and artistic director of an all-city jazz program known as the
Young Sounds of Arizona. Mr. Yoes has been a clinician, adjudicator, or performer for marching, concert, and jazz bands at numerous festivals in Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Oklahoma, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
Milas is originally from Huntsville, Texas. He has a BME from Sam Houston State University, where he studied under David Caffey, Dr. Fisher Tull and Dr. Ralph Mills. He has a MM in trombone from the University of Arizona, where he studied under Tom Ervin, Dr. James Keene, and Dr. Leonard Perlman. He also studied at the Aspen Music Festival under Dr. Per Brevig and Gary Gray. For ten summers, he studied at the Stanford Institute with Wycliffe Gordon, Delfeayo Marsalis, and Steve Davis.
Andy Sturgeon - Biographical Information
Andy Sturgeon is in his twentieth year as a music teacher and fourteenth year at Mundelein High School. At Mundelein High School, he teaches the Honors Symphonic Winds and Freshmen Concert Band, as well as the Honors Jazz Ensemble and a Beginning Guitar class. He also directs the Noise Show Choir combo and co-directs the Marching Mustangs and the Mundelein High School Pep Band. Before coming to Mundelein High School, Mr. Sturgeon was the Director of Bands in Evergreen Park School District 124, where he taught 5th through 8th grade instrumental music students. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master’s Degree in Educational Leadership from Concordia University. In 2022, Mr. Sturgeon was recognized with the Quinlan and Fabish Chicagoland Outstanding Music Educator Award. He is an active trombone player who played with the Northshore Concert Band for nine years, and resides with his wife and three sons in Mundelein, IL.
Mundelein High School Jazz Ensemble - Biographical Information
The Mundelein High School Jazz Ensemble is one of two curricular jazz bands that are audition-based and open to all 9th through 12th grade students. Throughout the school year the band performs over a dozen times in a variety of venues including concerts at the school, jazz festivals, and music clubs in the Chicagoland area including Fitzgerald’s Nightclub in Berwyn, Nellies in Palatine, The Venue in Aurora, and The Jazz Showcase in Chicago. In the past several years, the Mundelein High School Jazz Ensemble has been named Honor Band at the Purdue Jazz Festival, Eau Claire Jazz Festival, and performed at the Elmhurst University Jazz Festival. The Mundelein Jazz Ensemble has been selected to perform three times at the Illinois Music Education Conference (2016, 2020, 2024) and selected to perform at the 75th Annual Midwest Clinic (2021). Recent guest artists have included Jon Irabagon ('25), Kellin Hanas (‘24), Marques Carroll (‘23), Bob Lark (’23), Sharel Cassity (‘22), Steve Weist (’22), Kirk Garrison (‘21), Michele Fernández (’21), Chris Madsen (‘21), Rob Parton (‘21), and Kim Nazarian (’19).
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