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Written by Matt Brady
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Thursday, 08 May 2008 |
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 He may have traveled the world and conducted the U.S. Air Force Band, but he got his start in Greeley.
On Sunday, May 11, Col. Lowell Graham will come back home to guest conduct the Fort Collins Wind Symphony alongside Steve McNeal. The symphony’s season theme is “Colorado Connections,” which proves to be quite apt for Graham.
He calls himself a product of Greeley. “I grew up in Greeley,” said Graham, who heads up the music department at the University of Texas at El Paso. “I was the last to graduate from Greeley High School before it turned into Greeley Central.”
It seems Graham was in Greeley before a lot of its institutions made the transition to their current names. He attended UNC in 1971, back then called Colorado State College, and earned a bachelor’s in music education and a master’s in performance.
The road from there took him to dizzying career heights. “I joined the United States Air Force and ultimately became the commander and conductor of the U.S. Air Force Band,” Graham said. “When I retired, I was the senior ranking musician in the entire department of defense.”
Graham said that many people don’t realize that the Department of Defense is the largest employer of musicians in the nation.
Graham has known McNeal, the director of the Fort Collins Wind Symphony, for most his life, back to the time when they were students together. As such, coming to guest conduct is more like seeing old friends.
“I know many of the people that are performing in it,” he said. His parents still live in Greeley.
Fond of his roots, Graham tries to return as much as possible.
Guest conducting the Wind Symphony alongside an old chum only makes it that much sweeter. “It’s going to be a very nice opportunity to go visit friends and make music on a very special day,” he said.
TO GO:
• The Fort Collins Wind Symphony
• 3 p.m. Sunday, May 11
• CSU’s Griffin Hall at the University Center for the Arts, 1400 Remington St. in Fort Collins
• The concert is free and open to the public.
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