Verne Windham, guest conductor, Family Concert Swords and Sabers

January 29, 2022 - 7:30 pm, Schuler Performing Arts Center

Verne Windham, guest conductor, has been called the voice of classical music in the Inland Northwest. Now Music Director of KPBX Spokane Public Radio, Verne is starting his seventh decade of public music performance, if, as he points out, one counts his youth in Moscow High Prep band and a Lutheran Church choir. His first performance of the Firebird Suite was under conductor Igor Stravinsky. He has shared the stage with performers ranging from Yehudi Menuhin and Claudio Array to Ella Fitzgerald as well as The Supremes and Cheech and Chong. In 1971 he returned from the Eastman School of Music and the NY Army Band to become principal hornist of the Spokane Symphony and Instructor in Horn at WSU. In his 50 years in Spokane, he has been at the center of creating musical groups from the Baroque to the avant garde. Especially notable was the re-creation of Spokane’s first musical ensemble, the Spokane Falls Brass Band. That group played nationally on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion and has its first recording in print forever preserved through Smithsonian-Folkways. At his retirement from Spokane Youth Orchestra, he was their longest standing conductor. Verne has conducted Spokane Symphony, Spokane Opera and Spokane Ballet, and is a long-time, faithful friend of the Coeur d’Alene Symphony.

The *North Idaho Youth Symphony will join the Coeur d’Alene Symphony for this concert.