2013 Summer Music Festival
Choir Track
Faculty | Guest Faculty | Schedule
Daily Festival Activities Include:
- Festival Choir Rehearsal
- Breakout Vocal Ensembles
- Seminars led by Vocal Faculty
- Opera Cast Rehearsal
- Evening Activities – Performances and Entertainment
Faculty
David B. Gardner (DMA, The University of Arizona) is Associate Professor of Music and Director of Choirs at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas. Dr. Gardner conducts the A Cappella Choir and the Southwestern College Singers, as well as teaching Conducting, Vocal Diction, and Private Voice. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2005 Southwestern College Fassnacht Outstanding Faculty Award, and a second-place finish in the 2001 American Choral Directors Association National Student Conducting Awards Competition. He is active both regionally and nationally as a guest conductor, clinician, and adjudicator.
Dr. Gardner’s Carnegie Hall conducting debut was in March of 2005, and he appeared there again on March 19, 2010, conducting Mozart’s Solemn Vespers. He has performed as a vocal soloist, conductor, and chorus member with Wichita Grand Opera, and has prepared choruses for the Wichita Symphony Orchestra, Wichita Grand Opera, the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, and the University of Arizona Symphony. In March of 2008 he led the Southwestern College choirs in a series of well-received concerts across Italy. The tour culminated in a performance during Easter Sunday Mass at the Basilica of St. Mark in Venice.
Other past projects include performing in concert and recording with Linda Ronstadt (A Merry Little Christmas, Elektra Records), conducting the world premier performance of “Send Down the Rain” by New York composer Andrew Teirstein, and organizing and conducting 350 singers and instrumentalists in a memorial performance of the Mozart Requiem on September 11, 2002.
David Gardner’s principal conducting mentors have been Maurice Skones and Bruce Chamberlain. In 2002, he was selected as one of 14 international conductors to lead the Grammy Award winning Oregon Bach Festival Choir and Orchestra under the tutelage of Maestro Helmuth Rilling in the Oregon Bach Festival Masterclass in Conducting. In addition to his academic work, Dr. Gardner has spent more than two decades in music ministry, serving churches of various denominations.
Dr. Gardner is a member of the American Choral Directors Association, and is the current President for the Kansas Choral Directors Association. He is also a member of the Music Educators National Conference and a charter member of the National Collegiate Choral Organization. He lives in Winfield with his wife and four daughters.
2012 Guest Faculty
2013 Guest Faculty TBA
Brian Stranghoner is currently in his 20th year of teaching public school vocal music in Douglass, Kansas. His groups have consistently received “Superior” ratings at the Middle School and High School levels. He directs three ensembles and teaches 6th Grade General Music and two sections of Stagecraft. Each Fall Semester Douglass High School presents a musical which is open to the entire student body. Mr. Stranghoner directs, conducts and designs this production. His work as a tenor soloist includes opera and oratorio, recently singing Handel’s “Messiah” with the Reno Choral Society and the Tenor Solos in Schubert’s “Mass in Ab” for the Masterworks Chorale in Aiken, South Carolina. Other solo appearances have included recording with Janeal Krehbiel and her internationally known Lawrence Children’s Chorus and the Kansas City-based Allegro Community Children’s Chorus. Brian has served as Resident Artist with Wichita Grand Opera, both as Chorus Master and with minor roles in “Rigoletto” and “Die Zauberfloete.”
Mr. Stranghoner is a member of Music Educators National Conference, Kansas Music Educators Association and has served on the Board of Directors for the Kansas Choral Directors Association.
His greatest achievement was being selected, through an international audition, to perform Verdi’s “Requiem” under the direction of Mr. Robert Shaw in Carnegie Hall, New York.
Mr. Stranghoner is Director of Music Ministries at Woodlawn United Methodist Church in Derby, Kansas. Brian enjoys traveling with his wife Maggie and trying to keep up with his two kids, two beautiful step-daughters and their husbands- and he loves being “Papa” to his two Grandchildren!
Matthew Webber has taught vocal music for 9 years and is currently the vocal music teacher at Wichita West High School in Wichita, Kansas. Matthew received his Bachelor's degree in Vocal Music Education and his Master's degree in Music Education from Wichita State. During his early college years, he developed a strong love for barbershop music. Since then, Matthew facilitated a Young Harmony Explosion in Wellington, Kansas in 2005, and was the guest clinician at the Kansas City, Missouri Youth Harmony Explosion in 2006 and in Bentonville, Arkansas in 2012. He is the newly appointed Director of Kansas' newest competitive barbershop chorus, the SmorgasChorus, and he sings in a competitive barbershop quartet called Paririe Fire.
Mary Bander, Young Artist-in-Residence, is currently a B.A. Music major at Oklahoma City University, where she studies voice under Dr. Catherine McDaniel. Mary has performed in several OCU opera productions including Les Contes D’Hoffmann, Il Pagliacci, Dido & Aeneas, L’elisir D’amor, Gallantry, Riders to the Sea, and Die Fledermaus. She has also successfully competed in N.A.T.S. and Classical Singer competitions across the U.S. She is working towards her goal of becoming a professional opera singer. When Mary is not singing, she rides and trains horses on her family’s farm in Rockwall, Texas. Her residency is sponsored by George and Linda Cole.
Choir Track Schedule 2013
Monday, June 3, 2013 Schedule
| 11:00 am – 2:00 pm | Festival Move-in Lunch – On Your Own |
| 2:30 pm – 4:30 pm | Music Leadership |
| 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm | Advanced Music Leadership |
| 6:30 pm – 7:00 pm | Dinner |
| 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm | Festival Choir Orientation and Rehearsal – Darbeth Rehearsal Hall |
Tuesday, June 4 - Friday, June 7
| 8:30 am – 9:00 am | Breakfast – Dining Hall |
| 9:00 am – 11:00 am | Festival Choir Rehearsal – Rehearsal Hall |
| 11:10 am – 12:25 am | Breakout Vocal Ensemble Rehearsals |
| 12:30 pm – 1:15 pm | Lunch |
| 1:20 pm – 2:05 pm | Seminars led by Vocal Faculty – Rehearsal Hall |
| 2:10 pm – 3:55 pm | Festival Choir Rehearsal – Rehearsal Hall |
| 4:00 pm – 4:15 pm | Break and Snacks – Java Jinx |
| 4:20 pm – 5:40 pm | Opera Cast Rehearsal – Rehearsal Hall / Free Time |
| 5:45 pm – 6:30 pm | Dinner |
| 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm | Evening Activities
|
Saturday, June 8
| 7:30 am – 8:00 am | Breakfast |
| 8:00 am – 10:00 am | Final Rehearsals |
| 11:00 am | Family Day Begins Detailed schedule coming soon! |
