Jeffrey Bell-Hanson

Ear-training III/IV, Music History II, Research Methods

Jeffrey Bell-Hanson is in his fifteenth season as conductor of the University Symphony Orchestra at Pacific Lutheran University, and has established himself in the Pacific Northwest as a clinician, adjudicator and conductor. He brings to the podium a dedication not only to high standards, but also to performances informed by scholarship. His continuing interest in the rhetorical conventions of eighteenth-century orchestral literature enlivens his renditions of even the most contemporary works.

His thirty-year career on the podium and as a teacher has also included faculty appointments in Kansas, Louisiana and Michigan, where he won recognition for excellence in teaching both from Michigan Technological University and the State of Michigan . In addition to his academic positions, Dr. Bell-Hanson has conducted orchestras and wind ensembles throughout the United States and in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, including the West Bohemian Symphony Orchestra, the Vratza Philharmonic and the Philharmonia Bulgarica.

Dr. Bell-Hanson’s career-long concern for the orchestra as a model of community has led him to believe deeply in its ability to teach a sense of shared values. Eminent musicologist, Richard Crawford, in his 2001 book, America’s Musical Life: A History, wrote of the “sense of shared purpose” in one of Dr. Bell-Hanson’s orchestras, noting the focus on performing literature both historic and new that “did honor to the art of music.”

Memberships: MENC, WMEA, Conductors Guild, College Orchestra Directors Association