Summer Music Programs

Kevin R. Gulden has been a band director in a very successful program at Olmsted Falls Middle School for over twenty-nine years.  He has been a clinician for area music departments, guest speaker for future educators, conductor for honor bands, adjudicator for area contests, and a performer throughout the state of Ohio. He has been a long-time participant in Baldwin-Wallace College summer music programs.  Mr. Gulden is a graduate of Baldwin-Wallace College and obtained his Masters Degree from Cleveland State University.  He, his wife, and two children reside in Strongsville, Ohio.

Cristina Santelli recently completed a Master of Arts in Music Education degree at The Ohio State University where she served as a teaching assistant and guest conductor of the Collegiate Winds. She earned a Bachelor of Music Education from Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of Music, where she was also a trumpet performance major. Miss Santelli has had extensive instrumental music education experience.  She has taught seventh and eighth grade bands, jazz band, and general music at Cloverleaf Middle School, and served as the assistant director of the New Horizons Band Program and the Concert Wind Ensemble at Baldwin-Wallace College. Additionally, Miss Santelli has taught at the Cleveland Music School Settlement, Norton City Schools, Brunswick City Schools, Wooster Music Camp and served on the staff of the Matrix Indoor Marching Percussion Ensemble.

Loras John Schissel is in his eighth year as conductor of the Blossom Festival Band, one of the world’s premiere professional symphonic wind-bands. A native of New Hampton, Iowa, he studied brass instruments and conducting with Carl Stewart, Frederick Fennell, and John Paynter. In the years following his studies at the University of Northern Iowa, he has distinguished himself as a prominent conductor, orchestrator, and musicologist. He is founder and music director of the Arlington-based Virginia Grand Military Band, an ensemble comprised of current and former members of service bands.

 Mr. Schissel has traveled throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia conducting orchestras, bands, and choral ensembles in a broad range of musical styles and varied programs. As a composer and orchestrator, Mr. Schissel has an extensive catalogue of over 400 works for orchestra, symphonic wind band, and jazz ensembles, published exclusively by the C.L. Barnhouse Company. His musical score for the PBS special, Bill Moyers: America’s First River, The Hudson, which first appeared on PBS in April 2002, has received extensive coverage and critical acclaim. In May 2002, Mr. Schissel was inducted into The Circumnavigators Club of New York, in recognition of his world travel.(The other inductee was Walter Cronkite.) Also in May 2002, John Philip Sousa IV, great-grandson of the composer, commissioned Mr. Schissel to oversee the completion and orchestration of Sousa’s last march. The Library of Congress March was premiered in the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building by Schissel’s Virginia Grand Military Band at a gala concert celebrating the opening of the Kluge Center for Scholars. Mr. Schissel led the Blossom Festival Band in the Ohio premiere of the march at the opening concerts of the 2003 Blossom Festival on July 3 and 4, 2003.

 Mr. Schissel also is a musicologist in the Music Division at the Library of Congress, where he is a leading authority on the music of Percy Aldridge Grainger, Aaron Copland, Victor Herbert, and Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor Serge Koussevitzky. In 2003, Schissel was named editor of the Gerry Mulligan Publishing Project, a joint critical edition series by the Library of Congress and the Gerry Mulligan Publishing Company. As a recording artist, Mr. Schissel has amassed a large catalogue featuring a wide variety of ensembles and musical genres. He has embarked on a series of recordings of basic symphonic wind-band music with his ensemble, the Schissel Symphonic Wind Ensemble. His recordings with the Virginia Grand Military Band have won numerous awards, including the Sudler Scroll for outstanding musical excellence. As a writer, Mr. Schissel is co-authoring The Complete Literary and Musical Works of John Philip Sousa with the distinguished Sousa biographer Paul E. Bierley. Mr. Schissel has appeared in the award-winning PBS documentary If You Knew Sousa for the American Experience series, as well as Ben Wattenberg’s Think Tank. In 2005, he was elected to membership in the American Bandmasters Association. He continues to serve as a commentator on the “Voice of America” and for the United States Information Service.