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Meet Our Conductor
 Dr. John Entzi, Director of University Bands
at the University of North Carolina, Asheville,
is the seventh conductor of the Smoky Mountain
Brass Band (SMBB). Dr. William Bryant, chair
of the Fine Arts Department and director
of the A.C. Reynolds High School band program,
passed the baton to Dr. Entzi in fall of
2006 for SMBB's 26th season.
Dr. Entzi received his B.M.E. degree in 1974
from the University of North Carolina at
Greensboro, his M.A. in 1978 from Appalachian
State University in Boone, NC and his D.M.A.
in 1998 in trumpet performance from the University
of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina.
Dr. Entzi has toured and performed extensively
throughout the Southeast, where he performed
with Holiday on Ice, Disney on Parade, the
Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey Circus, the Henry Busse
Orchestra, The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, The
Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra, Guy Lombardo, Vaughn
Monroe, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, Atlantic
Jazz Orchestra, When Swing Was King, Nelson
Riddle Orchestra and the U.S. Air Jazz Orchestra.
He has performed with such luminaries as
Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Nancy
Wilson, The Four Tops, The Spinners, The
Temptations, Anita Bryant, Martha Raye, Bernadette
Peters, Johnnie Ray and the Gladys Knight
and the Pips. Dr. Entzi has also performed
with the Saint Joseph Symphony, the Kansas
City Symphony, the Western Piedmont Symphony,
the Greensboro Symphony and the South Carolina
Philharmonic, and is a charter member of
the Charlotte Repertory Orchestra.
Dr. Entzi is an active member of the National
Band Association, the International Association
of Jazz Educators, Music Educators National
Conference, International Trumpet Guild and
the College Band Directors National Conference.
He is also a member of the Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia
and the Kappa Kappa Psi Band Fraternity.
Besides his decades of touring and performing
extensively throughout the Southeast, Dr.
Entzi comes from a musical family. His mother
was a musician in her high school band, and
his maternal grandfather played cornet in
the Morganton Band and E-flat tuba in the
United States Army Band in France. At the
same time, on another continent, his paternal
grandfather was playing cornet in the Austro-Hungarian
Army Band.
Dr. Entzi met his wife, Karen, in the orchestra
at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
She currently teaches music at Haw Creek
Elementary School. |
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