Neil Freebern is Visiting Artist in Residence in Winds and Director of the Wind Ensemble. He holds a master’s degree in conducting and music education from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and has enjoyed a vibrant career as a music educator, trumpet performer, and arts administrator. His early success as the conductor of the UMass Youth Wind Ensemble led to yearly guest conducting engagements throughout New England and the opportunity to spend five summers as the conductor of the United States Youth Wind Ensemble conductor touring Europe. Mr. Freebern has served as the professor of Trumpet at Keene State College, and Castleton University in addition to his work with the Clarion Brass Quintet. As an educator, he has been recognized on several occasions for his outstanding contributions to the field of music education, having received outstanding educator awards from the Western District Music Educators Association, Central Berkshire Regional School District, Yale University, and the Roland Faculty Chair at Burr and Burton Academy. He was recently honored as the Vermont Music Educator of the Year by SBO magazine and was a quarter-finalist for the Grammy Music Educator Award. His knowledge and passion for music production, audio engineering, composition, and film scoring was recently honored with a Global Music Award for the best original film score for the short film, “The Silence Between.” In addition to his current leadership as the Director of Creative Arts at Burr and Burton Academy in Vermont, Mr. Freebern founded a program for his students, “Unleashed Media Productions,” dedicated to bringing student work to the community through a web-based distribution service and online radio stream of student work.
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