Conductors
Robert McElroy - Conductor/Artistic Director
Robert McElroy (Conductor and Artistic Director - The Houston Symphonic Band) is in demand throughout Texas, the United States and North America for his skill, passion, and musicianship in the concert hall as well as in the classroom. His impressive career spans four decades of conducting bands, choirs and orchestras including the Military Band of the People's Republic of China (PLA, Beijing), the Orquestra de Camara of the University of Yucatan in Merida, Mexico, the combined military bands of the Royal College of Music (Kneller Hall, London, England), the Fresno Wind Orchestra, the Texas Community College All-State Band (twice), the Texas Private and Parochial School All-State Band (twice) and numerous High School and Junior High School All-Region bands in Texas and nationwide. He has also served as the first (and only) conductor of Houston's only professional wind ensemble-The Katy Wind Symphony.
Mr. McElroy is the founder and artistic director of the Houston Symphonic Band. The group maintains an impressive concert and recording schedule with concert venues including Rice University's famed Stude Concert Hall, the Opera House of the Moore's School of Music (Houston), the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, the Grand 1894 Opera House of Galveston, Wortham Theatre (Houston), the Kinkaid School and the George R. Brown convention center. The HSB's concert 'home' is the Foundry United Methodist Church - located in the Jones Rd/FM1960 area of Houston.
Warner Brothers and Belwin Mills publications handpicked McElroy's band to record the compact disc "Inchon"- a collection of the music of internationally renowned composer Robert W. Smith.
Mr. McElroy has served as director of Fine Arts in Goose Creek CISD, President of the Texas Music Educators Association (Band Division Chair, 1986-88), and as an Executive Board Member of the Texas Music Adjudicators Association. McElroy has recently completed a term as a member of the Texas Music Adjudicators Association 'Standard of Adjudication and Performance Practices" Committee. He has served as guest conductor of many community bands and orchestras, and as adjudicator and clinician for countless festivals and competitions including the 21st Wind Festival at the University of California, Fresno.
Mr. McElroy also served as an educational consultant for Aha! Process, Inc.-an international consulting and publishing firm dedicated to school improvement and student achievement. The primary emphasis in Aha!'s work is to train teachers, church leaders, criminal justice professionals and others in a greater understanding of how economic diversity affects student and adult learning and behavior. He has presented workshops in Texas, Arkansas, Minnesota, Ohio, Georgia, New York, Wisconsin, California, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan. McElroy's specialty for "Aha" was connecting the message of "aha!'s" founder-Ruby Payne to the classroom strategies used by fine arts teachers of students from backgrounds including generational or situational poverty.
McElroy is recently retired from a 39-year teaching career that ended with a five year tenure as Director of Instrumental Activities for Houston Baptist University. He and his wife Marie live in Bellville, Texas - the community in which he began his teaching career.
Fred Angerstein - Associate Director
For the past thirty plus years Mr. Angerstein has been the band director at the Kinkaid School. The Kinkaid Band is an award-winning ensemble that has toured the world, most notably - a two week tour of China in the summer of 2004 at the invitation of the Chinese Government.
Mr. Angerstein studied at the Oberlin Conservatory, the Juilliard School of Music and at the University of Houston, receiving Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Applied Music. His conducting teachers include Jorge Mester, Dennis Russell Davies, Leonard Bernstein, and A. Clyde Roller.
His past positions include student conductor of orchestras and opera at the Juilliard School, assistant conductor of the New York Choral Society, conductor of the Rufino Opera Company of New York, assistant conductor of the Aspen Festival Orchestra and Opera Company, director of the Second Wind Ensemble at the University of Houston, assistant conductor of the Houston Civic Symphony, and clinician/conductor of various All -Region and All-State bands.