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 for their own studio Lyric Arts in Asheville.