All-State Conductors

Dr. Damon Talley serves as Director of Bands and Paula G. Manship Professor of Conducting at the Louisiana State University School of Music, where he oversees all aspects of the LSU Department of Bands, conducts the Wind Ensemble and teaches graduate conducting. The Band Department has been featured at national conferences on multiple occasions highlighting both the concert and athletic aspects of the program. Dr. Talley regularly serves as a guest conductor, clinician, and adjudicator throughout the United States and abroad, including engagements in Germany, Switzerland, England, Spain, Portugal, and Bulgaria among others. He has released recordings on the Equilibrium label and is published in multiple books by GIA publications. As an avid supporter of new music for the wind medium, Dr. Talley has conducted numerous world premier performances and has commissioned composers to write for the wind band. He is currently the chair for the Commissioning Committee for the SEC Band Directors Association.

Prior to his appointment at LSU, Dr. Talley taught on the faculties of the Shenandoah Conservatory, the University of Texas, the University of Michigan, and in the public schools in Texas at both the middle and high school levels. His principal conducting teachers are Jerry Junkin, Michael Haithcock, and H. Robert Reynolds. Dr. Talley is an elected member of the American Bandmasters Association, Phi Beta Mu, and an honorary member of Kappa Kappa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma. He is also an Educational Consultant and Clinician for the Conn-Selmer Corporation.

Dr. Scott Boerma is the Director of Bands at Western Michigan University. Prior to this appointment, he was Associate Director of Bands at the University of Michigan, and before that the Director of Bands at Eastern Michigan University. He began his career teaching music in the Michigan public schools. Boerma earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in wind conducting at Michigan State University, his Master of Music degree in music education from the University of Michigan, and his Bachelor of Music degree in music education from Western Michigan University.

An active composer, Boerma’s concert band works have been performed by many outstanding ensembles, including “The President’s Own” Marine Band, the U.S. Navy Band, the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra, and the Kasetsart Winds (Bangkok, Thailand), to name just a few. Also a prolific arranger, Boerma receives yearly commissions to write music for many university and high school marching bands and drum and bugle corps. For twenty-six seasons from 1989-present he has been the music arranger for the acclaimed Madison Scouts Drum & Bugle Corps.

Boerma is an elected member of the prestigious American Bandmasters Association, and he was inducted into the Drum Corps International (DCI) Hall of Fame.

Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Nowlin is the 29th Director of the United States Marine Band. In this role, he serves as music adviser to the White House and has led the band at presidential inaugurations, state dinners, state funerals and other national events under four presidential administrations, continuing a tradition of excellence dating to 1798.

Prior to his 2023 appointment, Nowlin served as Assistant Director (2014) and Associate Director/Executive Officer (2018). Since his commissioning, he has conducted “The President’s Own” on major national stages, international trips and the band’s annual national concert tour.

Nowlin joined the band in 2010 as Staff Arranger. His compositions and arrangements have been featured on numerous recordings and at White House events, collaborating with artists like Beyoncé, Kelly Clarkson and John Williams. Nowlin has been a producer on over 20 albums including the band’s recordings of “The Complete Marches of John Philip Sousa.”

Hailing from Cleveland, Nowlin earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from Bowling Green State University, which also awarded him an honorary Doctor of Music Education in 2024. A former music educator, he remains an advocate for young musicians as a clinician, guest conductor and coauthor of educational materials.

Graham Breedlove is an internationally renowned trumpeter, and for over 29 years he was a featured soloist with the Army Blues in Washington, DC. He has performed with The Saturday Night Live Band, Ray Charles, Ramsey Lewis, Mariah Carey and Doc Severinsen. Graham has appeared on more than 200 recordings, including back-to-back Grammy winning CDs in 2004 and 2005, and his own album “Coming Home”, available on iTunes and at Amazon.com.

Mr. Breedlove has appeared as a guest soloist across the country and around the world, and has served on the faculties of George Mason University, Towson University, Catholic University of America and the National Jazz Workshop. Graham also appears on the Hal Leonard Jazz Play Along Series, with over 150 volumes currently available in music stores around the world. In 2011 he was honored by his undergraduate alma mater when he was inducted into the LSU Alumni Association Hall of Distinction as the 2011 Young Alumnus of the Year.

Graham holds the Bachelor of Music degree from Louisiana State University, the Master of Music degree and Performer’s Certificate from Indiana University, and has studied with world famous masters David Baker, Alvin Batiste, and Stephen Burns

Jerome Jennings is a drummer, bandleader, sideman, and Emmy Award winning composer. His debut recording ‘The Beast’ was named one of the top three jazz releases by NPR, received a four star rating in Downbeat Magazine, and was nominated for the prestigious French ‘Grand Prix du Disque’ award for Album of the Year in 2016. Jerome’s sophomore recording, ‘Solidarity’, released November 2019 was recognized by NPR as best music that spoke truth to power of 2019.

Jerome performs and tours around the United States and internationally with his groundbreaking musical group, Jerome Jennings & iLL Philosophy. Jerome served as music supervisor and composer for Louis Massiah’s film TCB: The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing. He has performed, toured and recorded with legendary musicians like Sonny Rollins, Hank Jones, Christian McBride, Ron Carter, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Wynton Marsalis (J@LC), The Count Basie Orchestra, Philip Bailey, Henry Butler, and countless others.

Jerome has made recordings and shared the stage with contemporary musicians, Lakecia Benjamin, Camille Thurman, Jazzmeia Horn, Christian Sands, and Thembelihle Dunjana, to name a few. He has been a member of piano master, George Cables’ trio since 2021. Spring of 2007 Jerome earned a MM from the prestigious Juilliard School in Manhattan NY. He was the Resident Director of The Juilliard Jazz Orchestra from fall 2017 to 2021.

Jerome is a jazz scholar. Since 2022, he has been a professor of graduate jazz history at Montclair State University. He is a lecturer, professor of jazz drums at Princeton University. Jerome has taught, conducted clinics, designed courses nationally and internationally. Jerome has been an artist-in-residence and has lectured at dozens of Universities and Academic institutions, nationally and internationally, including UNC Greensboro, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Swing University, John Hopkins Peabody Institute, Rutgers University, The Juilliard School, Jazz Music Institute JMI (Brisbane, AU), Sydney Conservatory of Music, Xavier College (Melbourne, AU), The Ohio State University, Aspen Colorado, Brigham Young University, University Of Ghana Legon School Of Performing Arts, Rockport Jazz Workshop, and the Universidad Sergio Arboleda (Bogota Colombia) and The National Taiwan University of The Arts.

Gwendolyn Dease is professor of percussion at the Michigan State University College of Music. She is passionate about educating the next generation of young musicians and regularly gives master classes at universities throughout the US and abroad. She is currently on the faculty at the Brevard Music Center and has served on the faculty for the Filarmonica Joven de Colombia and the Interlochen Arts Camp.

Dease maintains a career as an active solo, chamber, and orchestral musician. She has performed solo and chamber recitals throughout the United States, Asia and South America. She is passionate about new music and has been involved in commissioning over 30 new works for solo and chamber percussion. She is currently principal percussionist with the Brevard Music Center Orchestra and has also performed with the Detroit Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and the Grand Rapids Symphony among others.

Dr. Eric Willie has built an international career as a soloist, educator, and clinician, presenting performances on three continents and in more than 30 U.S. states. He has appeared as a soloist, clinician, and ensemble director at multiple Percussive Arts Society International Conventions (PASIC), Midwest Clinics, Days of Percussion events, and music educator conferences.

Active within the Percussive Arts Society (PAS), Eric currently serves on the PAS Board of Advisors and previously chaired the International Percussion Ensemble Committee. Under his direction, his percussion ensembles won the 2015 and 2021 PAS International Percussion Ensemble Competitions. In the marching arts, he serves as a Percussion Consultant with the Carolina Crown Drum and Bugle Corps.

Eric’s solo compositions and educational books have been published by GIA Publications, Musicon Publications, Ox and Lamb, Tapspace, and Row-Loff Productions. He has also authored articles for Percussive Notes, Rhythm! Scene, TAMA/Bergerault, Innovative Percussion, and Music & Arts.

Eric is Professor of Percussion Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and performs with the Winston-Salem Symphony and the New Hampshire Music Festival Orchestra. He has previously served as a Regents Professor as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar at the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE) in Recife, PE Brasil.

With her distinctive voice as a maestra, speaker, and poet, critics praise Panamanian-American conductor Kalena Bovell as “one of the brightest stars in classical music” (Channel 3 News, Connecticut). Following her 2024 Sphinx Medal of Excellence and recognition as a Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship Award Recipient, Bovell enters the 2026–27 season with major debuts including the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Opera Orlando, where she will conduct her first traditional opera, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, and the Texas All-State Orchestra. Additional debuts include the Florida All-State Orchestra and the Paducah Symphony Orchestra. She also returns to the San Diego Symphony for a second season as Conducting Fellow.

In 2023, Bovell made history as the first Black woman to conduct an opera in Canada, leading a world-premiere reimagining of Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha. She rejoined the Chineke! Orchestra for its 10-year anniversary season following their acclaimed collaboration at the BBC Proms, where ArtsDesk declared, “Never let her go.”

Raised in Los Angeles, Bovell’s path into classical music began at age 11. Without access to private instruction, she did not begin formal violin lessons until she was 18. Today, she shares her journey to inspire musicians from nontraditional backgrounds.

Dr. Kira Omelchenko is an award-winning conductor and music educator and currently serves as Director of Orchestras and Associate Professor of Music at James Madison University School of Music. Prior to joining JMU, Dr. Omelchenko served as Associate Dean of Performance and Recruitment, Associate Professor of Music, and the Conductor of the Symphony Orchestra at Wilfrid Laurier University Faculty of Music (Ontario, Canada).

Dr. Omelchenko received a prestigious Fulbright Scholar Award in 2023-24 where she resided in New Zealand for five months conducting, teaching, and mentoring students, collaborated with local composers, and conducted research in the National Library of New Zealand. During her Fulbright, she was also a visiting scholar and artist-in-residence at The New Zealand School of Music—Te Kōkī, at Victoria University, in Wellington, New Zealand. 

Winner of the International Conductors Workshop and Competition and the International Institute for Conductors in Bulgaria, Dr. Omelchenko was the 2022 recipient of the Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music as well as a finalist in the 2022 National American Prize in Music virtual concert production category and is a past prize winner in Opera Conducting category.

Dr. Keith Dodson is currently Director of Orchestral Activities and Assistant Professor of Conducting at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. Additionally, he was the founding Music Director and Conductor of the Chamber Orchestra of the Smoky Valley, a professional orchestra based in Central Kansas. Dr. Dodson completed his PhD in Music Education with an emphasis in Orchestral Conducting at the Florida State University College of Music.

At Central Michigan University, Dr. Dodson serves as Music Director of the Central Michigan University Symphony Orchestra. This flagship ensemble hosts top-performing undergraduate and graduate music majors at CMU. A passionate educator, Dr. Dodson serves as co-director of the Michigan American String Teachers Association chapter at Central Michigan University, alongside Dr. Jamie Fiste, where they mentor future string music educators. As an active clinician, Dr. Dodson has conducted hundreds of middle school and high school honor orchestras and clinics across the United States.

Dr. Dodson earned bachelor’s degrees in music performance and music education from the University of Central Florida, Orlando. He completed a master’s degree in music education from the Florida State University, Tallahassee. Dr. Dodson is an active member of the National Association for Music Education (NAfME), KMEA, the College Orchestra Directors Association (CODA), the Michigan American String Teachers Association (MASTA), and Pi Kappa Lambda.

Joseph Baca is a member of Mariachi Cobre and serves as the group’s principal violinist. He is the author of the premier 50 Mariachi Etudes for Violin and, for over 22 years, has regularly served as a performer, clinician, judge, and workshop designer for several mariachi competitions and festivals across the country. Joe was a certified Texas music educator before moving to Orlando to perform full time. He recently founded the Pro Institute of Mariachi & Education to focus on professional educators and college-level outreach in performance and pedagogy.

Alysia Lee’s full circle role as an artist, arts educator, teaching artist and arts advocate, gives her a broad perspective of the arts ecosystem. Alysia received national recognition for advancing access, equity, visibility, representation, and power-sharing between artists, organizations, and communities. Key to her methods are empowerment, partnership construction, and intersectional approaches to community exchange while centering anti-racism, creativity, and social justice.

She is the Founder and Artistic Director of Sister Cities Girlchoir(SCG), the El Sistema-inspired, girl empowerment, choral academy in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey. SCG has performed for audiences at Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, The Smithsonian Institute, The Kimmel Center, Citizens Bank Park, National Constitution Center, The Barnes Foundation, New Jersey Performing Arts Center and throughout their local communities. The girls cherish their recent performances with The Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Vijay Gupta, Opera Philadelphia, Westminster Choir College, and a host of community artists.

Alysia Lee is the education program supervisor for Fine Arts education for the Maryland State Department of Education where she shares her vision of statewide equity and excellence across five arts disciplines: music, dance, visual arts, theatre, and media arts. She is a proud member of the State Education Agency Directors of Arts Education (SEADAE). Lee is a Board member of Chorus America.

Josephine Lee is an Emmy Award–winning and Grammy-nominated conductor, pianist, singer, producer, and cultural architect whose work is redefining the role of music in society. As President of Uniting Voices Chicago (formerly Chicago Children’s Choir), she has expanded the organization’s reach, forging groundbreaking collaborations with world-renowned artists including Djo, Karol G, Chance the Rapper, Yo-Yo Ma, and more. Lee’s artistic vision has been recognized with the Kennedy Center’s National Committee for the Performing Arts Award for Arts Advocacy, the Roman Nomitch Fellowship at Harvard Business School, and the Jesse L. Rosenberger Medal from the University of Chicago.

As a composer and interdisciplinary creator, Lee’s original works, including Multiverse, Ascension, and The Good Goodbyes, bridge classical tradition and contemporary voice.

Her honors reflect the breadth of her impact: the Kennedy Center’s National Committee for the Performing Arts Award for Arts Advocacy, a Harvard Business School fellowship in Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management, the Jesse L. Rosenberger Medal from the University of Chicago, and the 3Arts Award.

Sydney Guillaume is originally from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and currently resides in Portland, working as a full-time composer, conductor and frequently doing workshops on his music with universities and high schools throughout North America. Since 2013 he has been the conductor of Imbroglio Sextet, a group of musicians from Haiti, Spain, and the United States.

Guillaume’s compositions are known to be intricate, challenging and yet highly spirited. Many of his choral works, most with original poetry by his father Gabriel T. Guillaume, have fostered an awareness of the beautiful Haitian culture and continue to serve as an ambassador for his native country.  They have been featured at numerous national conferences and international festivals. In 2017, he was honored by the top music school in Haiti for his “great contribution in the expansion and the promotion of the music and culture of Haiti around the world.” Guillaume has also written original film and documentary scores for the Los Angeles based company Loyola Productions.

His recent activities as conductor include the 2024 ACDA Southern Region Conference Advanced SATB Honor Choir, the 2022 Georgia All-State Senior Treble Choir, the 2019 Florida All-State Middle School Treble Chorus, the 34th annual Idaho State University Choral Invitational Festival, the 2018 Maine All-State High School Mixed Chorus, an all-Guillaume concert at the Lincoln Center in NYC, and concerts with the Imbroglio Sextet at Carnegie Hall and at the 2018 ISME World Conference in Azerbaijan.

Hailed as a “composer of energized and soulful music,” Dr. Zanaida Stewart Robles is an acclaimed black American female composer, teacher, singer, and conductor who specializes in choral music. Her activities as a clinician and guest conductor include serving as a clinician for the 2026 Jazz Madridals Festival at NAU, as the 2025 KMEA All-State SSAA Conductor, and as the 2023 Guest Clinician for Education Through Music-Los Angeles’s 13th Annual “Music Unites the World” Festival. As a performing arts instructor at Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City, California (HW), she conducts the upper school Chamber Singers, Jazz Singers, Bel Canto treble choir, and Wolverine Chorus for beginning mixed voices. Under her direction, the HW choirs have sung at Carnegie Hall three times and have toured Canada, Italy, England, and Costa Rica. As a concert soprano soloist, studio vocalist for film and television, and professional ensemble singer, Dr. Robles has sung throughout the United States, and in parts of Europe, New Zealand, and Australia. Her film, television, and video game credits include “The Lego Movie,” “Despicable Me 3,” “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” “Venom,” “Game of Thrones in Concert,” “Frozen 2,” “Mulan,” “Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War,” “The Lion King 30th Anniversary Concert,” “The Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour,” “Wicked,” “Sinners, and “Wicked: For Good.”