1970: Fisher Tull, ToccataFisher Tull (1934–1994) was a faculty member at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, where he served as chairman of the Department of Music for 17 years, beginning in 1965. Tull served as president of the Texas Association of Music Schools and was a member of the Board of Directors and the Commission on Undergraduate Standards of the National Association of Schools of Music.
A native of Texas, Tull earned a BM in music education (1956), an MM in music theory (1957), and a PhD in music composition (1965) from the University of North Texas. He studied trumpet with John Haynie and composition with Samuel Adler. As a composer of more than 80 works for orchestra, band, chorus, and chamber music, Tull has won several notable awards, including ten ASCAP awards, five First Prize awards from the Texas Composers Guild, and an Arthur Frazer Memorial Prize for his Three Episodes for Orchestra. He won the 1970 ABA Ostwald Award for Toccata.
1971: Karl Kroeger, Divertimento for Concert BandKarl Kroeger (b. 1932) received a bachelor’s and master’s of music from the University of Louisville, where he studied with Claude Almand, and pursued postgraduate studies at the University of Illinois, where he studied with Gordon Binkerd. He began doctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison but completed his PhD at Brown University.
Kroeger was head of the American Music Collection at the New York Public Library from 1962 to 1964 and director of the Moravian Music Foundation in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Kroeger has served on the music faculty at Ohio University and the University of Colorado, and was head of the music library at the University of Colorado–Boulder. As a musicologist, Kroeger received two grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities to prepare volumes of The Complete Works of William Billings for the American Musicological Society.
Kroeger has composed over 100 works for a variety of performance groups, including his Divertimento for Concert Band, which was selected as the winning composition for the 1971 ABA Ostwald Award.
Robert Edward Jager (b. 1939) was arranger/composer for the U.S. Navy at the Armed Forces School of Music from 1962 to 1965. In 1968 he graduated from the University of Michigan. He then went on to be the lecturer in composition and directing at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. In 1971, he joined the faculty at Tennessee Tech University and remained there until his retirement as professor emeritus in 2001.
Jager has composed over 150 published works for band, orchestra, chorus, and various chamber combinations. Major ensembles that have commissioned his music include the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra, the Republic of China Band Association, several large universities, and all five of the Washington-based military bands.
He has received numerous honors for his works, including the Roth Orchestra Award twice, and is the only three-time winner of the ABA Ostwald Award (1964, 1968, 1972).
Sinfonietta was premiered by the Butler University Wind Ensemble and performed by the U.S. Army Band at the 1972 ABA convention. The composition contains three movements: Scherzo, Elegy, and Fugue.
1973: Roger Nixon, Festival Fanfare-MarchRoger Nixon (1921–2009) was an American composer, musician, and professor of music. He was Professor Emeritus of music at San Francisco State University and a member of the American Bandmasters Association.
A native of California, Nixon attended Modesto Junior College, where studied clarinet with Frank Mancini, formerly of John Philip Sousa's band. He received a bachelor of arts, master of arts, and doctorate of philosophy in composition from the University of California at Berkeley, where he studied primarily with Roger Sessions as well as Arthur Bliss, Ernest Bloch, Charles Cushing, Frederick Jacobi, and Arnold Schoenberg.
Nixon served as faculty at Modesto Junior College from 1951 to 1959, and at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University) from 1960 until his death in 2009.
Nixon has been honored by the Texas Bandmasters Association as a Heritage American Composer. He has also received several awards for composition, including a Phelan Award, the Neil A. Kjos Memorial Award, five grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the 1973 ABA Ostwald Award for his composition Festival Fanfare-March.
1974: James Sclater, VisionsJames S. Sclater (b. 1943) is a retired professor of music from Mississippi College, where he taught advanced music theory, counterpoint, orchestration, ear training, choral arranging, and band arranging for forty years. He attended the University of Texas at Austin where he received a doctorate of musical arts in composition. He continued his post-graduate studies in theory and composition at the University of Southern Mississippi.
Sclater has been awarded the prize for music composition from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters on six different occasions and has won numerous other awards. He has previously served as a clarinetist in the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra, music librarian in the Austin Public Library, and has been a member of professional associations such as the International Clarinet Association, the Jackson Wind Symphony, and the Mississippi Music Teachers Association. Sclater won the 1974 Ostwald Award for his composition Visions.
1975: Robert Panerio Sr., JubilosoA native of Washington state, Robert Panerio Sr. (1929-2019) was a professor of music from Central Washington University, where he received the Distinguished Professor Award for Creativity in 1982. Previously, Panerio was supervisor of instrumental music at Moses Lake, Washington, and Dean of Arts and Humanities at Big Bend College, where he worked until 1963. During his time at Central Washington University, Panerio was also a visiting professor at Eastern Oregon State College.
Panerio received B.A. and M.A. degrees from Central Washington University and later pursued doctoral studies at the Eastman School of Music. For many years, Panerio was a professional trumpeter playing symphonic, show, and jazz music.
As a composer, Panerio has written many works for band and orchestra, including Jubiloso for concert band, which won the 1975 Ostwald Award.
1976: Loretta Jankowski, TodesbandLoretta Jankowski (b. 1950) studied composition and theory in the preparatory division of the Juilliard School of Music in the early 1960s. She holds a master’s of music in composition from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in composition from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. Composers with whom Jankowski has studied include Harrison Birtwistle, Morton Feldman, Marek Stachowski, Joseph Schwantner, and Samuel Adler.
Jankowski has taught on the faculties of Northern Illinois University at Dekalb, California State University at Long Beach, Ball State University, Kean University, and East Carolina University. She has also served as composer-in-residence at Bennington College in Vermont.
Jankowski has written prize-winning music for orchestra, voice, and concert band and more than 30 principal works. Her music has been performed in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, Holy Trinity Chapel at New York University, Yale University, and the Fifth International Festival of Experimental Music in Bourges, France. She has also received a lifetime achievement award from the Piano Teachers Society of America.
Jankowski won the 1976 Ostwald Award for Todesband, a work for large wind ensemble. The piece, based on a Bach chorale, gradually works from dissonance and ascends to joyful harmonizations.
A scan of the score for Todesband is available through UMD Digital Collections: http://hdl.handle.net/1903.1/32985
1977: William H. Hill, Danses Sacred and ProfaneWilliam H. Hill (1930–2000) graduated from the University of Northern Colorado with a bachelor of arts degree in 1952 and a master of arts degree in 1955. After graduating, he worked as a woodwind instructor and director of bands at East Texas State University before beginning a Ph.D. program at UCLA, where he taught saxophone and arranging techniques. From 1972 to 1982, Hill was band director and chairman of the instrumental music program at California State University. While teaching, he also conducted and led band clinics throughout the world.
Hill was first runner-up in the 1976 Ostwald Competition for his piece Sonitus Revelationis. The following year, Hill won the Ostwald Award for Danses Sacred and Profane, which was performed by the U.S. Marine Band at the 1977 ABA Convention.
See also the William H. Hill collection at SCPA:
http://hdl.handle.net/1903.1/20845
1978: James Barnes, Symphony, op. 35From 1977 till his retirement in 2015, James Charles Barnes (b. 1949) was a professor of theory and composition at the University of Kansas, where he taught orchestration and composition. He received a bachelor of music degree in composition and music theory from the University of Kansas in 1974, and master of music from the same institution in 1975. He studied conducting privately with Zuohuang Chen.
His compositions have been performed widely in America, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, and Australia and recorded by the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra. Barnes is also a tubist and has performed with numerous professional organizations in the United States.
He is a two-time winner of the ABA Ostwald Award for contemporary wind band music. He won his first award in 1978 for his Symphony, op. 35, written for his master of music degree, and then again in 1981 for Visions Macabres.
Symphony, op. 35
