SC Vanguard Announces 2011 Brass Staff
The Santa Clara Vanguard is excited to welcome David Clemmer, the Director of Athletic Bands and Assistant Director of Bands at the University of Kansas, as the corps’ new Brass Caption Manager. Clemmer will succeed Andre’ Feagin, who resigned the position in early September. Feagin recently accepted a position of Assistant Professor, Associate Director of Bands and Director of Athletic Bands at The University of Texas at El Paso.
?I?m really pleased to bring David to SCV,? said Vanguard CEO Jeff Fiedler ?his professional success speaks for itself and I have no doubt that he?ll be able to build upon the great work Andre? has done. David and his team will certainly continue to raise our standard of excellence in brass.?
Assisting Clemmer as his designated second will be John Pasquale, the Assistant Director of Bands at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In addition to their professional accomplishments in music education, Clemmer and Pasquale both bring a wealth of exceptional drum corps experience to the Vanguard as past members of The Cavaliers’ brass staff, who served from the 2001 through 2009 seasons. While there, they were key members of an effort that arguably created a fundamental change in the art of brass playing in the drum corps activity, while achieving two Jim Ott High Brass Awards (2002 and 2006) and a total of five top three finishes in brass during that time.
Clemmer has assembled a team of veteran musicians and music educators for the Vanguard brass caption. Members of the 2011 SCV Brass Staff will include John Zastoupil, Todd Dixon, Cory Meals, Eric Baker, Ryan Demkovich, Levi Chavis and Donnie Hull.
“We are thrilled to welcome David Clemmer and his staff to SCV! This seasoned brass educational team offers a unified approach to brass pedagogy and to full ensemble technique. All of them have roots in the same strong educational method that I have, so interpretation of the musical score should be seamless from paper to performance! We are very proud of André Feagin’s inspiration and excellent results with the Vanguard brass section and understand his need to focus on his new position at the University of Texas at El Paso. We wish him well and he will be dearly missed!” stated SCV brass arranger/composer Key Poulan.
To learn more about the SCV Brass staff, click here.
Auditions for the 2011 Vanguard Brass section will be held on December 17-19 at Independence High School in San Jose, CA. Brass audition excerpts and additional information about the corps’ Clinic & Audition weekends will be posted before the end of September, 2010. The SCV Percussion auditions will be hosted on November 26-28 in the Santa Clara/San Jose area, with call-backs and additional auditions on December 17-19, along with the brass. The SCV summer Color Guard audition date will be announced soon.
