Lynn Brinckmeyer
Lynn Brinckmeyer is Associate Professor of Music and Director of Choral Music Education at Texas State University. She served as President of MENC: The National Association for Music Education from 2006-2008. Lynn has also served as President for the Northwest Division of MENC, on the Music Educators Journal Editorial Board, and the Conn-Selmer University Advisory Board. In addition to chairing the Eastern Washington University Music Department for six years and conducting the EWU Concert Choir, she received both the PTI Excellence in Teaching Award and the CenturyTel Award for outstanding faculty. Other awards include the Washington Music Educators Association Hall of Fame and the MENC Northwest Division Distinguished Service Award.
Dr. Brinckmeyer founded the Eastern Washington University Girls’ Chorus, and was the Artistic Director of the Idaho State Children’s Chorus in Pocatello, Idaho and the South Hill Children’s Chorus in Spokane Washington. She is a co-founder of the Hill Country Youth Chorus in San Marcos, Texas and serves as its Artistic Director.
Throughout her career, Dr. Brinckmeyer has conducted all-state choirs, honor choirs, lectured, presented master classes and performed in forty-seven states in the United States and eleven countries, including China and South Africa.
Florence Henderson
The youngest of ten children born to a tobacco sharecropper in Depression-era Indiana, Florence Henderson discovered singing as a refuge at a very early age. Her beautiful voice and love of performing led Florence to move to New York at age 17 to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts as a scholarship student.
After one year at the Academy, she was “discovered” and became a protégé of Rodgers and Hammerstein, embarking on the national tour of Oklahoma! in the lead role of Laurey. Leading roles would follow in major productions of The Sound of Music, South Pacific, The King and I, and others.
In the 1950’s, Florence Henderson became a mainstay performer on shows like “Ed Sullivan” and was the first woman to guest host for Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show.” The role for which she is best known, Carol Brady in The Brady Bunch came along in 1969. The program struck an immediate chord with the television public, and though it ended production in 1974, has not left the airwaves in syndication since that time.
Ms. Henderson was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003, and in 2008, was inducted into the Smithsonian Institute’s first permanent Entertainment History Exhibit as one of the greatest pop cultural icons of all time.
Throughout her longtime association with the Mrs. America organization, Florence Henderson has spoken eloquently about the importance of music education for all. She further demonstrated this commitment in 2009 when she appeared at MENC’s Rally for Music Education during Music Education Week, speaking to an audience which included the U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
L. Scott McCormick
L. Scott McCormick is the founder and CEO of the National Association of Music Parents - AMP, a grassroots movement designed to mobilize and unite parents of school-aged students and concerned citizens throughout country with great teachers and the music industry, to “turn up the volume and be heard” at the local and national level.
From 1984-2010, Scott served as the CEO and President of Bands of America and Music For All, Inc., and is credited with transforming the nonprofit association into a multimillion-dollar organization through cutting-edge educational opportunities, social media marketing tools, and key alliances. Through innovation and quality programming, Bands of America created new experiences for students within diverse educational communities, while garnering crucial industry support.
Scott expanded Bands of America into new areas that included the development of The National Concert Band Festival, international tours to Japan and Europe with performances at WASBE and the World Music Festival, and the appearance of the Bands of America Honor Band in the Tournament of Roses® Parade.
In 2008, Scott received the Phi Beta Mu International Bandmasters’ Fraternity Outstanding Contributor award; in 2010, the Citation of Excellence from the National Band Association; and he was inducted into the Bands of America Hall of Fame. He is a member of the American Bandmasters Association and has served in Board and membership positions with the Indianapolis Consortium of Arts Administrators, the Quincy Jones Musiq Consortium, and the Marian University Arts Initiative Board of Visitors.
George N. Parks
The late George N. Parks was hired at the ripe age of 24 to be the director of the University of Massachusetts Minuteman Marching Band in 1977. In his letter of recommendation, longtime friend and colleague Lynn Klock remarks, “His unique style of marching soon drew not only crowds of new band members, but an entirely new appreciation and respect for the band program in Amherst.”
In addition to his duties at UMass, George Parks founded and was head clinician of the Drum Major Academy in 1978, through which he influenced the lives and careers of tens of thousands of student musicians in the 33 years since. He was a member of the Bands of America Hall of Fame, and in 1998, his Minuteman Marching Band was awarded the prestigious Sudler Trophy. In 2005 and 2009, he was Director of the Bands of America National Honor Band in the Tournament of Roses Parade. Mr. Parks was a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award and the chair for many years of the University’s Commonwealth of Massachusetts Employees Charitable Campaign.
Professor Klock continues, “All of these roles suggest the type of person George Parks was, and the characteristics he held within. Students remember him as a mentor, a friend, a source of inspiration, as being energetic, enthusiastic, and excited – all things that he strove to be, and hoped to inspire in others. Colleagues remember him as “a great showman,” “a doer,” and “a great representative of the University of Massachusetts and state of Massachusetts.” George touched tens of thousands of people with his extraordinary presence, leadership energy, and devotion to his students and his art. His passion, which he never ceased to display, will remain in the hearts of all those that he has left behind.”