The Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College Band and Concert Band will present a tribute to “Mentors, Teachers and Friends” during their Tuesday, April 9 concert in Howard Auditorium at 7 p.m.

TThe National High School Band Directors Hall of Fame will present a posthumous dedication to Mr. Eugene H. Wyles. Wyles was a former band director and music educator at ABAC for 17 years and also taught for many years in the Worth County school system.

Dr. Oliver Boone, Executive Director of the Hall of Fame, will be with the band to present this prestigious honor. The concert will also feature “The Black Horse Troop”, written in 1924 by the great bandmaster, John Philip Sousa.

“We will feature several guests at our concert and a premier of a new band composition called “A Celtic Air” by Dr. Suzanne Banister,” said Dr. Jennifer Huang, director of ABAC’s Fine Arts Department. “Sheri Wyles, adjunct instructor of woodwinds and music appreciation at ABAC, will conduct a “Hymn Tune Rhapsody” by Jerry Brubaker. The Hymn Tune is dedicated in memory of her father Eugene Wyles.”

Huang said that ABAC Band Director Deborah Bradley will conduct with two guest artists on the “Whiplash” version of “Caravan” by Duke Ellington. Hayden Braswell, a senior at Irwin County High School, will perform on drums.

The special conductor for the concert will be saxophone artist Ray Smith from the Southeast Alabama Community Band in Troy, Al. Smith, a former Associate Professor of music education at Troy University, has performed with such artists as Ella Fitzgerald, Burt Bacharach, Julie Andrews, Steve Allen, The Temptations, and many other legends of jazz, pop and commercial music.

The Spring Band Concert is free and open to the public.