About WMCW

Conductor and Music Director

Mrs. Gail A. Brechting 

Mrs. Brechting is in her fifteenth year as the conductor and music director of the West Michigan Concert WINDS. Under her direction, the WINDS performed at the 2005 National Convention of the Association of Concert Bands in Quincy, IL - as well as became the 2005 recipient of the Sudler Silver Scroll, an international award recognizing excellence in adult community bands, administered by the John Philip Sousa Foundation. She holds a Bachelor of Music Education degree from Central Michigan University and a Master of Arts degree from Western Michigan University. She has performed trombone with the Traverse City Symphony, the Lansing Concert Band, the West Shore Symphony, many area musical ensembles and eleven years as the principal trombonist with the WINDS. She also is a much sought after soprano vocal soloist in the West Michigan area.

The WINDS have toured three times abroad under her direction - to Wales, England, Ireland, Austria Germany and Switzerland. In 2006 she was invited twice as a guest conductor to Louisiana, once with the Acadia Winds, and again as the featured conductor with the Louisiana Middle School Honors Band. In 2007 Mrs. Brechting went to Arkansas as the guest conductor of the Hot Springs Community Band. From 1996-1999 Mrs. Brechting represented MSBOA as the State Representative for the Michigan Youth Arts Festival, held on the campus of Western Michigan University. For the past twenty-five years, she has been an active district and state level adjudicator for low brass, bands and orchestras and has taught private trombone and tuba lessons for all ages for over thirty years.

Presently, she is the band director at Muskegon Community College and is in her thirty-first year of music education, the past twenty-five with the Reeths-Puffer School District. Mrs. Brechting is a member of the Association of Concert Bands, the National Band Association, the College Band Directors Association, the Michigan School Band and Orchestra Association, theWorld Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles, P.E.O. and the Woman Band Directors Association; most recently she was elected to the national board of the Association of Concert Bands, and is the first woman selected to be a member of the John Philip Sousa Foundations, Sudler Silver Scroll Award Selection Committee.

Mrs. Brechting lives in Spring Lake with her engineer/pianist husband Frank and their ten-year-old daughter Annelise.