UNC School of Music: University Bands

Robert Duke is the Marlene and Morton Meyerson Centennial Professor in Music and Human Learning, University Distinguished Teaching Professor, Elizabeth Shatto Massey Distinguished Fellow in Teacher Education, and Director of the Center for Music Learning at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the founder of the National Forum on Research in Motor Learning and Music, a research collaborative devoted to the study of motor skill development and procedural memory consolidation. A former studio musician and public school music teacher, he has worked closely with children at-risk, both in the public schools and through the juvenile court system, and he directs an active research program in motor skill learning and procedural memory at UT. Dr. Duke has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Research in Music Education, the Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, Psychomusicology, and other publications, and he has directed national research efforts under the sponsorship of such organizations as the National Piano Foundation and the International Suzuki Institute. He lectures frequently on the topics of human learning, systematic observation and evaluation, and behavior management, presenting workshops and teaching demonstrations throughout North America. He is the author of Scribe 4 behavioral analysis software, and his most recent books are Intelligent Music Teaching: Essays on the Core Principles of Effective Instruction and The Habits of Musicianship: A Radical Approach to Beginning Band, which he co-authored with Jim Byo of Louisiana State University. The Habits of Musicianship, released in the spring of 2007, is distributed online cost-free through the Center for Music Learning.

Now in 28 countries, the Music of 21st Century Composer, Stephen Melillo has been played and recorded by some of the World's finest ensembles and conductors. More than 950 works span from the IBM Thinkpad® Demo to the Concerto for Violin & Orchestra. Currently 112 commissions for Wind & Percussion Ensembles of the 3rd Millennium comprise the body of recorded work called STORMWORKS. With 17 years in the public schools, more than 30 years as an international guest conductor, and more than 35 years as a practitioner of the Chinese martial art, Mr. Melillo's ability to communicate musically comes from an extensive knowledge base. From beginning instrumental students to Musicians employed by the Rotterdam and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras, Mr. Melillo has worked with a vast array of multinational students aged 4-87. Such diverse experience includes teaching Braille-reading music students at Perkins School for the Blind in Massachusetts to teaching close-quarter defense techniques to an 11-man detachment of Green Berets stationed in Mansfield, Connecticut during the late 1970s. Stephen studied conducting with Jens Nygaard and Atilio Poto, a student of Arturo Toscanini. Varied educators, conductors and commissioning parties have termed Stephen Melillo's work "a new voice in the direction of music.” In addition to film work with New York and Los Angeles based studio orchestras, 112 live concert premieres include: Last World Standing: HEROES of PEACE, rendered by the Sinfonischen Blasorcehesters Ried in the Brucknerhaus, Linz, Austria. Karl Geroldinger & Stephen Melillo conducting. Mr. Melillo attended the University of Connecticut at Storrs in 1976, the Manhattan School of Music in New York in 1979, and holds a Bachelor of Music Education from the Boston Conservatory of Music, Massachusetts in 1980 and a Masters in Music and Conducting from Columbia University, New York in 1982.