Founding Board of Directors

Our Board of Directors

Our Board of Directors

The Detroit Concert Band is governed by a founding board that brings together some of the most respected voices in American concert band music — conductors, composers, educators, and publishers.

Anthony Messina Founding Director
Dr. Anthony Messina came to the Detroit Concert Band the way most meaningful things happen — through a combination of deep personal history and the refusal to let something important disappear. A former high school and college band director who served on the faculties of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Florida Atlantic University, Anthony's graduate thesis centered on the Detroit Concert Band's Sousa Bicentennial Collection. While teaching at the collegiate level, he conducted concert bands and taught courses in the music education and conducting sequences. He founded the revival in 2026, incorporated the nonprofit, joined AFM Local 5, assembled the board, and is leading the effort to return professional concert band music to Belle Isle. He lives in Metro Detroit, where he also works as a Mortgage Loan Consultant — a career he approaches with the same discipline and care for people that shaped his years on the conductor's podium. Dr. Messina holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Wind Conducting from the University of Kansas, a Master of Music in Wind Conducting from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, and a Bachelor of Music Education from Wayne State University.

Andrew Glover Board Director
There is a word for what Andrew Glover's presence on this board represents, and that word is continuity. In college, Glover joined the Detroit Concert Band, conducted by Leonard B. Smith, and performed for four seasons on euphonium. He participated in numerous recording sessions with the DCB, including ten phonograph records of Gems of the Concert Band and a documentary film soundtrack. He did not merely witness the Detroit Concert Band at its height — he was part of it. He sat in that section, under that baton, on that stage on Belle Isle. He is the living link between what the band was and what it is becoming again.

Since joining the C. L. Barnhouse Company in 1998 and being appointed President and CEO in 2022, Glover has built a career as composer, arranger, editor, and publisher — with over 200 band works to his name, performed and recorded by ensembles worldwide. An enthusiast and advocate for classic concert band music and history, he oversees Barnhouse's 135-year archive of publications and historical memorabilia and is frequently involved in band history research projects. C. L. Barnhouse, founded in 1886, is one of the oldest and most respected band music publishers in America — and its catalog includes recordings by the Detroit Concert Band itself

John Pasquale Board Director
Dr. John D. Pasquale is an internationally recognized American and Italian conductor, lecturer, author, and educator. He holds the Donald R. Shepherd Professorship in Conducting at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, where he serves as Director of the Michigan Marching and Athletic Bands and Associate Director of University Bands. His research advances contemporary rehearsal pedagogy, with a particular focus on the development of aural analysis skills for conductors, and he is co-author of The Directed Listening Model: A Rehearsal Guide For Ensemble Musicianship, widely adopted as a foundational text in undergraduate and graduate curricula worldwide. He has conducted, cliniced, and lectured across North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, and has provided instructional leadership for some of the most elite marching ensembles in the country. He brings to the Detroit Concert Band's board both the prestige of one of America's great university band programs and a deep personal investment in what professional concert band performance can mean to a community.

Michael Passmore Board Director

Brand Ulrich Board Director
Brandon Ulrich is Director of Orchestra and Choirs at Stony Creek High School in Rochester, Michigan — which makes him the board's most direct connection to the students, families, and communities of Metro Detroit that the Detroit Concert Band exists to serve. A working educator in the trenches of Michigan music education, Brandon brings to the board the practical knowledge of what it means to build musical audiences from the ground up, to inspire young people to listen and perform, and to sustain a music program in a community year after year. He understands that the Detroit Concert Band's mission is not abstract — it is about real people, on a real stage, in a city that deserves to hear great music.

Kevin Wilt Board Director
Kevin Wilt composes music for a variety of ensembles that balances sophistication with accessibility, and experimentation with solid craftsmanship. He is Associate Professor of Music, Composer-in-Residence, and Chair of the Department of Music at Florida Atlantic University — a career that has taken him far from where it began, which was in Detroit. He holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition from Michigan State University and his Bachelor's degree in Music Composition and Theory from Wayne State University in Detroit. His compositions have been performed by orchestras and ensembles across the world, and he earned a Michigan Emmy Award nomination for Best Musical Composition for his work in film. He describes himself as a classical music evangelist — composing music to introduce new audiences to the joy, drama, and adventure of classical music. There is no better description for what the Detroit Concert Band exists to do, and no better temperament for the person helping to guide it.