UCF-Orlando Orchestra Invitational

Dr. Alexandra Dee is the director of orchestral activities and an assistant professor in the Hayes School of Music at Appalachian State University, where she leads the university’s orchestras and conducts performances of the Appalachian Opera Theatre. Under her direction, the Appalachian Symphony Orchestra has performed at the North Carolina Music Educators Association Conference and the College Orchestra Directors Association National Conference. Dr. Dee is also the Music Director of the Asheville Symphony Youth Orchestra.

Previously,  Dr. Dee served as Director of Orchestral Studies and assistant professor of violin and viola at Indiana University of Pennsylvania; Director of Orchestral Activities at the University of St. Francis in Joliet, Illinois; music director and conductor of Chicago’s South Loop Symphony Orchestra; and a cover conductor for the Joffrey Ballet, with whom she debuted in 2017 conducting the Chicago Philharmonic.

Also at home in the opera pit, Dr. Dee has conducted productions with Northwestern University Opera Theater, Manitoba Underground Opera (Winnipeg), and IUP's Main Stage Productions. She is a consistent advocate for contemporary music, having performed and premiered numerous works by living composers. In particular, she is a vigorous champion of the works of her husband, composer Roger Zare.

Dr. Dee completed her doctoral studies in orchestral conducting at Northwestern University, where she studied with Victor Yampolsky. She is also an alumna of the Florida State University, where she completed both Master of Music in orchestral conducting and Bachelor of Music Education degrees,  studying conducting with Alexander Jiménez and choral conducting with André Thomas. While at FSU, she was the founding music director and conductor of the Campus Orchestra, a string orchestra geared toward non-music majors from across the university community.

Conductor Douglas Droste is recognized as possessing "obvious joy" for making music and a "sure sense of timing" when on the podium. Those under his baton routinely acknowledge his in-depth interpretations, keen sense of communication and personable ability to empower musicians.

Droste’s guest conducting appearances include the INSO-Lviv Symphony Orchestra (Ukraine), and the orchestras of Kansas City, Indianapolis, Columbus, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Midland-Odessa, Fox Valley (IL), Chappaqua (NY), and the Amarillo Virtuosi. Equally at home in the pit, he has conducted over 30 productions of opera, ballet and musical theatre. Droste has also led eclectic shows with artists such as Black Violin, Ben Folds, The Flaming Lips, Pink Martini, Michael Cavanaugh, Time for Three, Christian Howes, and Disney’s All-American College Orchestra Alumni, among others. He previously served as artistic director of the Muncie Symphony Orchestra, where he was praised for dynamic performances, innovative programming and his rapport with musicians and community.

A dedicated teacher, Droste is director of orchestral studies at the Baldwin Wallace University Conservatory of Performing Arts, where he conducts the Baldwin Wallace Symphony Orchestra and teaches conducting. He regularly programs traditional repertoire, works by underrepresented composers, as well as new music by the composers of today. He also seeks unique collaborations and projects, such as Ron McCurdy’s Langston Hughes Project, sensory friendly concerts for children with special needs, and a recording with Tony Award winner Sutton Foster, "Take Me to the World," on the Ghostlight label.

As an advocate of music education, Droste has conducted numerous all-state orchestras, as well as the Honors Performance Series at Carnegie Hall and Sydney Opera House, Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute, French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts, and an upcoming engagement with the Music for All Honor Orchestra of America. He is also active as a clinician and adjudicator, including Festival Disney, ASTA’s National Orchestra Festival, MCP at Carnegie Hall and the Music for All National Festival. Droste is a Yamaha Artist and Master Educator.

A talented violinist, Droste has performed with the orchestras of Canton, Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Nashville, and the Lancaster Festival, among others. He is also skilled on viola, trumpet, and as a tenor. Droste holds degrees from The Ohio State University and Texas Tech University.

Mr. Charles Watford is the Music Director and Symphonic Orchestra Conductor of Florida Symphony Youth Orchestras. He is also a clarinetist in Southern Winds and serves as a clinician across Florida. Mr. Watford believes that we are all lifelong learners of music.

Watford earned a Bachelor of Music in Clarinet Performance and Music Education from Stetson University and continued his studies at Florida State University where he received a Master’s Degree in Music Education. At Stetson, he participated in the band, orchestra, and pit orchestra, and during his senior year, he performed the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with the Stetson Orchestra as a finalist in their Annual Concerto Competition. At Florida State University, he performed with the Symphonic Band, Wind Ensemble, and Symphonic Orchestra. His conducting mentors include Bobby Adams, Tom Sleeper, James Croft, and Kenneth Williams. He further honed his skills at conducting workshops at the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Texas at Austin, working with notable conductors such as Craig Kirchhoff, Alan McMurray, Richard Floyd, Kevin Sedatole, and Jerry Junkin.

Over the past 31 years, Watford has taught at both the high school and collegiate levels. He began his career in 1994 as the Director of Bands at Lake Howell High School where he received the Otto J. Kraushaar Award twice and was named Teacher of the Year for the 1999-2000 school year. From 2000 to 2005, he continued his teaching at Winter Springs High School, overseeing the band program and guitar classes. Under his leadership, the Winter Springs band performed at the Peach Bowl in Atlanta, the Cherry Blossom Parade in Washington, D.C., and consistently received straight superiors at the Florida Bandmasters Association State MPA, earning the Otto J. Kraushaar Award. Additionally, Watford was an adjunct clarinet professor at Seminole State College from 2003 to 2005.

Watford recently retired from Dr. Phillips High School’s Visual Performing Arts Magnet where he served as Director of Bands for 19 years and was named Teacher of the Year in 2008. In addition to band, he taught piano, Jazz Band, AP Music Theory, and Orchestra from 2009 to 2011. During his tenure, the Symphonic Orchestra received superior ratings at the 2011 Florida Orchestra Association State Concert Music Performance Assessment. The Dr. Phillips bands performed nationally and internationally, including at the Music for All National Concert Festival in Indianapolis in 2011. The bands consistently received superior ratings at district and state performances, and Watford earned the Jack Crew Award twice for five consecutive years of state superiors. In 2020, he received the Oliver Hobbs Outstanding Band Director Award making him a Florida Bandmasters Association Legacy Member.

Watford has conducted numerous All-County bands throughout Florida and conducted the High School All-State Honors Band in 2014. He currently serves as an adjudicator for the Florida Bandmasters Association and has participated in several committees including the Concert Music and MPA committees. Many of his former students are now teachers and performers in the music field. He is a Life Member of the Florida Bandmasters Association, holds memberships in the Florida Orchestra Association, National Band Association, and Florida Music Educators Association. Watford is an elected member of the National Bandmasters fraternity Phi Beta Mu. He resides in Oviedo with his wife, Susan, their daughters, Lauren and Emily, and their French Bulldog, Sarafina.

Foster Beyers is currently the conductor of the University Orchestra at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla. He comes to Missouri from Virginia where he was the Director of Orchestras at James Madison University. While at JMU Beyers led the Symphony and Chamber Orchestras, conducted the fall opera productions and mentored students in the Masters and Doctoral program in Orchestral Conducting. From 2011-2016 Beyers served as Director of Orchestras at Concordia College in Moorhead, MN. While at Concordia Mr. Beyers led the Concordia Orchestra in challenging repertoire not typically undertaken by undergraduate ensembles such as Stravinsky’s Petrushka and the Violin Concerto of Alban Berg. Under his leadership the Concordia Orchestra performed in six states during their annual regional tours. They also embarked on an historic international tour to the Holy Land in 2014 where they played concerts in Jerusalem, I’billin, Bethlehem and Ramallah.

Prior to Concordia, Foster Beyers served as interim director of orchestra at the College of St. Benedict/St. John University near St. Cloud, MN for the 2010/2011 academic year. From 2008-2011 he was a James Sample Fellow in conducting at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities where he led the Campus Orchestra and String Orchestra while studying with former Richmond Symphony Music Director Mark Russell Smith. Mr. Beyers holds a Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting from Northwestern University where his principal teacher was Victor Yampolsky. Additional conducting studies have been with Osmo Vanska, Henry Charles Smith, Markand Thakar, Kenneth Kiesler, Robert Hasty, Mallory Thompson and Nobuyoshi Yasuda.

Beyers is a committed advocate for and partner to music educators at every level. He began his career in the public schools of Green Bay, Wisconsin teaching orchestra and band while also serving as Music Director of the Green Bay Symphony Youth Orchestras. As an educator he has conducted the Merit School of Music Symphony Orchestra in Chicago and the Jugendorchester Stuttgart as well as numerous regional honors orchestras including the 2017 Alabama All-State Sinfonia Orchestra, the 2019 All-Virginia Orchestra, and the 2020 North Carolina Eastern Regional Orchestra. For the 2023-24 season he served as interim conductor of the Youth Orchestras of Central Virginia in Charlottesville.

Mr. Beyers has been invited to conduct numerous regional orchestras including the Waynesboro Symphony, Fargo-Moorhead Symphony, Northshore Chamber Orchestra, Skokie Valley Symphony and the Eau Claire Chamber Orchestra. In December of 2023 Beyers made his debut with the Fargo-Moorhead Ballet leading 4 sold-out performances of the Nutcracker. Beyers previously served as Music Director for the Ravenswood Community Orchestra in Chicago and the Buffalo Community Orchestra in Minnesota as well as the Seward Concert Band in Minneapolis. Beyers currently lives in Springfield, Missouri with his wife, conductor and oboist Yi-Ping Chen and their daughter Amelia.

James Fellenbaum enjoys an extraordinarily diverse career as a conductor, equally at home with Symphonic music, Chamber Orchestra repertoire, Pops, Ballet, Opera, Choral-Orchestral, and Film with Live Orchestra.

Fellenbaum is the Director of Orchestras at the University of Tennessee, a position he has held since 2003. He oversees and conducts the Orchestra Program, which includes the Symphony Orchestra – winner of the 2023 American Prize in orchestral performance, large ensemble program – the Chamber Orchestra, founded in 2004, the Contemporary Music Ensemble, founded in 2006 and dedicated to music written since 1950, and UT Opera Theater, where he oversees orchestral administration, and has conducted past productions such as Don Giovanni, La Traviata, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, The Turn of the Screw, Sweeney Todd, Susannah, Cosi fan tutte, Little Women, and more.

Orchestral performances at UT have grown in size of ensemble, depth of repertoire, and quality of performances, resulting in invitations to perform in state-wide and regional concerts, receiving critical acclaim such as “…the UT Symphony has developed, at an amazing pace, into an ensemble that rivals the professional orchestras in many communities.” Additionally, the Orchestra Program been chosen for two different PBS recording projects, performing as the classical soundtrack for Appalachia: A History of Mountains and People, narrated by Sissy Spacek, and part I of The Truth about Trees.

Fellenbaum is the Resident Conductor of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, a position he has held since 2006. He conducts a variety of concerts with the KSO, and has lead the orchestra in a wide array of repertoire, ranging from the complete Brandenburg Concerti to orchestral music from Wagner’s The Ring Cycle. His performances on the Masterworks and Chamber Classics series have garnered such praise as “…a remarkable performance, one that was clean, focused, and razor-sharp in its control, yet passionate and warm in its display” and “one of the most compelling performances of a Beethoven symphony I have yet heard in Knoxville.” As a frequent conductor on the Knoxville News-Sentinel Pops series, he has collaborated with such renown artists as Kenny G, Chris Botti, The Texas Tenors, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Jim Witter, Ann Hampton Calloway, The Indigo Girls, and The Midtown Men, along with tributes to Bob Denver, The Beatles, Elvis, as well as the popular Cirque de la Symphonie. He also excels in Film with Live Orchestra concerts, including recent presentations of The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Mary Poppins. As part of the KSO’s Education and Community Partnership Program, he conducts performances throughout the city of Knoxville, as well as regional communities in east Tennessee and southwest Virginia. He also conducts the educational programs, including Side-by-Side concerts with local high school orchestra programs, as well the KSO’s annual Young People’s Concerts, which are seen by 10,000 elementary students each year.

Since 2010, Fellenbaum is also the Music Director of the Knoxville Symphony Youth Orchestra Association. The KSYOA consists of 6 orchestras, lead by the Youth Orchestra, which he conducts. In March of 2018, the Youth Orchestra was selected to compete in the National Orchestra Festival in Atlanta, sponsored by the American String Teachers Association, where they won 1st Prize in the Youth Orchestra Division. The Youth Orchestra was also awarded 3rd Prize in The American Prize competition–Youth Orchestra division, for their 2017-2018 season. In June 2020, the Youth Orchestra took their first-ever tour to Europe, and performed in Prague and Vienna. He has been a guest Music Director of the Symphony of the Mountains Youth Orchestra (TN), and was previously the Music Director of the Suburban Youth Symphony in Illinois. He has conducted the American Youth Philharmonic, Texas Honors Orchestra, and has led many regional and all-state orchestras, as well as hundreds of workshops and clinics.

In 2023, Fellenbaum became a regular guest conductor with the longtime symphonic show, Bugs Bunny at the Symphony and became Principal Guest Conductor in 2025. He has led the show with orchestras around the world, including recent engagements with FILMharmonique in Montreal, CA, the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, CA, the San Francisco Symphony, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, AUS, the l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva, SUI, the Nashville Symphony, TN and the famous Hollywood Bowl Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl. In fall 2023, James became the Music Director of the Appalachian Ballet Company, and succeeded Sande MacMorran as the principal conductor of the annual The Nutcracker productions with the ABC and the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra.
The 2025-2026 season marks James Fellenbaum’s 8th year as Music Director of the Brevard Philharmonic, NC. Concerts include Classical, Holiday, Pops, and Music in the Schools programs, and have been met with critical and popular acclaim.

He was invited to the 2006 First International Gennady Rozhdestvensky Conductors Competition, where he was one of 20 conductors chosen to compete out of 112 applicants from 26 countries around the world, and finished as a Finalist – the only American to reach that round.

Dr. Rachel Grubb Friedman has spent her life loving music as a violinist, conductor, and teacher. Raised in a musical home, she began violin and piano at a young age and started conducting and organizing orchestras in high school. Her love of playing in orchestras and teaching life lessons through musical concepts led her to design a one-of-a-kind double major in Orchestral Conducting and Violin Performance in the University of Tennessee's prestigious College Scholars Program. During those undergraduate years, Rachel founded and directed the Oak Ridge Youth Symphony Orchestras and Summer Conservatory in Tennessee while also playing violin in the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra.

Her passion for youth orchestras and orchestral conducting led Rachel to complete her Masters Degree in Orchestral Conducting at Northwestern University in 2012. While in Chicago, she also directed the Merit School of Music's Conservatory Orchestra and freelanced in the Chicagoland area. In May of 2017, Rachel earned her PhD in Music Education and Orchestral Conducting from Florida State University under the mentorship of Dr. Alexander Jimenez and Dr. Clifford Madsen.

An avid adventurer, Rachel uses music as a great excuse to travel the world and has performed, learned, and taught at many beautiful summer festivals including the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado, the Järvi Festival in Estonia, the International Workshop for Conductors in Czech Republic, the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors in Maine, and the Missouri Symphony Orchestra as Assistant Conductor, Principal Second Violinist, and Conservatory Director from 2008-2016.

Her American conducting appearances include the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Missouri Symphony Orchestra, Astoria Music Society Orchestra, American Youth Philharmonic, Tallahassee Youth Orchestras, Tallahassee Ballet Orchestra, MAYS Orlando, and the Florida Symphony Youth Orchestras. She also guest conducted the Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic in the Czech Republic, the Estonian National Youth Orchestra, and the Parnu City Orchestra in Estonia.

Calogero Fanara, Director

Program

String Symphony No. 2 in D Major Mvt. 1Felix Mendelssohn
Danzas de Panama Mvt. 4 William Grant Still
Irish tune by County DerryPercy Grainger
Strange HumorsJohn Mackey

Raine Hollingsworth, Director

Program

1. 1. 1. Capriol SuitePeter Warlock
         1. Basse Danse
         2. Pavane
         3. Tordion
         4. Mattachins
   1. Symphony no. 5, mvt. II Andante con Moto Ludwig von Beethoven, arr. Bud Caputo

1. Danzas de PanamaWilliam Grant Still, Jr.
   1. Cumbia y Congo

Brandon Bangle, Director

Program

• Andante FestivoJean Sibelius
• Styres RallyStafford
• Serenade For String Orchestra Edward Elgar

• • I: Allegro piacevole

• String Symphony No. 2 Felix Mendelssohn

• • III. Allegro vivace

• The Fire WithinBrian Balmages

Lisa Coyne, Director

Program

1. String Symphony No. 3 in E MinorFelix Mendelssohn
   1. Allegro di molto
   2. Andante
   3. Allegro
2. Simple SymphonyBenjamin Britten
   1. Sentimental Sarabande
3. String Quartet No. 8, Op. 110 arr for String OrchestraDmitri Shostakovich arr. Drew
   1. Largo
   2.  Allegro molto

Eli Serrano, Director

Program

Brandenberg Concerto No. 3 Mvt. 1J. S. Bach
The GiftWilliam Hofeldt
The Lost RelicChris Pilsner

Dominick Eggen, Director

Program

• Chapter OneCarold Nunez
• Simple Symphony, for string orchestra, Op.4Benjamin Britten

• • Movement 3: Sentimental Sarabande
  • Movement 4: Frolicsome Finale

• St Paul's Suite, Op.29, no.2Gustav Holst

• • Movement 4: Finale (The Dargason)

Christopher Simons, Director

Program

• Sinfonia No. 12 in G Minor Felix Mendelssohn

• • III. Allegro molto

• Serenade in E Major Op. 22 Antonin Dvorak

• • IV. Larghetto

• Souvenir de Florence Op. 70Pyotr Tchaikovsky, arr.Lucas Drew

• • I. Allegro con spirito