Edward Wolfe

While playing in Wally Cleveland's instrumental ensembles, Wally asked me to run the Brass Sextet after school and enter it in the District 7 Solo and Ensemble Festival in the Spring of 1964. We performed the Ewald Symphony for Brass earning a superior rating at the District Festival which qualified us for State. Then we again earned a superior rating at the State Competition representing the HHS Band. That was probably the event that led me to major in Music Education at UNM.

I taught instrumental music in the public schools of Albuquerque, New Mexico and San Dimas, California for 40 years before retiring in 2008. I am currently the director of the San Dimas Jazz Workshop Big Band and the San Dimas Brass Ensembles. This February, I was elected to the California Alliance for Jazz Hall of Fame, an honor that I am most proud of. I was nominated and chosen to enter the Hall of Fame of the California Alliance for Jazz by Dr. Jeff Tower and the governing board. I am honored and humbled to join the company of some very talented performers, composers, arrangers and educators including Sammy Nestico, Bob Curnow, Dave Eshelman, Don Gunderson, Ike Jenkins, David Caffey, Shelly Berg, Sid Lasaine, Ashley Alexander, Jeff Tower, Robin Snyder, Johnny Rinaldo and many more. I'll was inducted at the CASMEC State Convention In Fresno on February 21 with Tom Kubis, Rory Snyder and Bob McDonald. I am proud to have been selected as the San Dimas Citizen of the Year for 2015. As chairman of the San Dimas Senior Commission, I have begun a new event to raise funds for our Senior Center. "Swinging for Seniors" will feature the San Dimas Jazz Workshop Big Band under my direction on Saturday, November 3rd, 2018.