Credit: Rachel Lane
Credit: Rachel Lane
Credit: Rachel Lane
The Maestro
- by Dr. Andrew Nowakowski
Photos by Jerry Taylor, Barbara Willians, Stefan Antwarg and Rachel Lane
Educator and Conductor
Bair taught orchestra and other music classes for 40 years for the Harford County Public School system (Maryland), retiring in 2016. He was inducted into the Harford County Educator Hall of Fame in 2018. Bair is currently an adjunct faculty member at Harford Community College, is on the conducting staff for the Elizabethtown College Music Camp, and is often invited to conduct and adjudicate youth orchestras and soloists.
In addition to be the music director of the Susquehanna Symphony Orchestra, Bair has conducted orchestras in Texas, Oklahoma, and Toronto. For the 2019 fall semester Bair was the orchestra director at the University of Delaware filling in for James Anderson who was on sabbatical.
"When I was still teaching, I brought a middle school orchestra to Hershey Park in 2018 and you were one of four judges. My students who were there that day had performed in five festivals before that day since starting sixth grade, including the National Orchestra Festival in Atlanta that year at ASTA. They thought your feedback was the absolute best feedback they'd ever received ... in fact many said that they wished they had performed for you before we went to Atlanta. Long story short, thank you for being such a great educator and adjudicator!" - Shawn Roberts, Festival Director at Music in the Parks