Timothy Salzman is in his 33nd year at the University of Washington where he serves as Professor of Music/Director of Concert Bands, is conductor of the University Wind Ensemble and teaches students enrolled in the graduate instrumental conducting program. Former graduate wind conducting students of Professor Salzman have obtained positions at fifty-seven universities and colleges throughout the United States. Prior to his appointment at the UW he served for four years as Director of Bands at Montana State University where he founded the MSU Wind Ensemble. From 1978 to 1983 he was band director in the Herscher, Illinois, public school system where the band program received several regional and national awards in solo/ensemble, concert and marching band competition. Professor Salzman holds degrees from Wheaton (IL) College (Bachelor of Music Education), and Northern Illinois University (Master of Music in low brass performance), and studied privately with Arnold Jacobs, former tubist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He has numerous publications for bands with the C. L. Barnhouse, Arranger’s Publications, Columbia Pictures, Hal Leonard Publishing and Nihon Pals publishing companies, and has served on the staff of new music reviews for The Instrumentalist magazine. Professor Salzman has been a conductor, adjudicator, arranger or consultant for bands throughout the United States and in Canada, England, France, Russia, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, China, and Japan, a country he has visited twenty-one times. Recently he has frequently travelled to China where he served as visiting professor at the China Conservatory, given master classes for numerous wind bands, and conducted several ensembles including: the Shanghai Wind Orchestra on their 15th Anniversary Concert in Philharmonic Hall in Shanghai; the People’s Liberation Army Band in two concerts (2009/10); the Beijing Wind Orchestra in a concert appearance at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Tiananmen Square; and the Tsinghua University Band in concerts in 2016/2017. He also served on three occasions as an adjudicator for the Singapore Youth Festival National Concert Band Championships. He is compiling editor and co-author (with several current and former UW graduate students) of A Composer’s Insight: Thoughts, Analysis and Commentary on Contemporary Masterpieces for Wind Band, a five-volume series of books on contemporary wind band composers published by Meredith Music Publications, a subsidiary of the Hal Leonard Corporation. He is an elected member of the American Bandmasters Association and is a past president of the Northwest Division of the College Band Directors National Association.
The University of Washington Wind Ensemble is the select wind ensemble at the UW and is comprised of the finest wind and percussion players on campus. Under Professor Salzman’s direction the University of Washington Wind Ensemble has performed at a number of prestigious music conventions, has presented several world premiere performances of outstanding new music for wind band and in 2004, undertook a highly acclaimed nine-day concert tour of the Kansai region of Japan, returning for more extensive tours of that country in 2007 and 2010. The UW Wind Ensemble presented several concerts in the main concert venues of Beijing, China in March of 2013, including a sold-out concert in the National Center for the Performing Arts in Tiananmen Square that was broadcast nationwide on China Central Television. The ensemble returned to China for two more concert tours in 2016 and 2019 playing before large audiences in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, and Xi’an. In the spring of 2006, the ensemble was invited by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra to present a concert at Benaroya Hall as a part of the Symphony’s Made in America Festival. The London Financial Times review of the concert applauded “music of surprising sophistication…Cindy McTee’s Finish Line pulsated energetically and William Bolcom’s Song was simply gorgeous.” Subsequent to the 2006 performance the ensemble was invited for return appearances on Seattle Symphony concert series in 2007, 2008 and, most recently in 2011 when Maestro Gerard Schwarz conducted the ensemble. The UW Wind Ensemble has also collaborated with a number of internationally renowned guest artists, conductors and composers including Eddie Daniels, Steve Houghton, James Walker, Douglas Yeo, Leigh Howard Stevens, Allen Vizzutti, Jeffery Fair, Mary Lynch, Ben Lulich, John DiCesare, Donna Shin, Seth Krimsky, Chris Olka, David Maslanka, Michael Colgrass, Cindy McTee, Eric Ewazen, Satoshi Yagisawa, David Stanhope and Huck Hodge. In July of 2008 Nihon Pals, a music education resource company based in Osaka, Japan, released a set of instructional DVDs regarding the subject of building ensemble musicality featuring Professor Salzman and the UW Wind Ensemble. Membership, based on audition, is open to the entire student body regardless of major field of study. Additional opportunities for student involvement in University of Washington instrumental organizations include the Symphonic Band, the Concert Band, the Campus Band, the 240-member Husky Marching Band, jazz ensembles, several combos and the UW Symphony Orchestra. The University of Washington was host for the 2011 National Conference of the College Band Directors National Association.