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American Band College dedicates new Ashland facility By Jim Flint Updated: Jun 28, 2022 12:00 PM A A Scott McKee, founder and executive director of the American Band College, helps Gladys Wright Tuesday during the dedication of the new Al and Gladys Wright Center of the American Band College in Ashland. [Jamie Lusch / Mail Tribune] An Indiana woman and her husband will long be associated with the city of Ashland thanks to their service and her generosity to the American Band College. A ceremony Tuesday morning dedicated the new Al and Gladys Wright Center of the American Band College in a former church building at 748 Siskiyou Blvd., on the corner of Siskiyou and Liberty Street. During the ceremony, Gladys Wright, 97, and about 175 people involved in this year’s ABC summer program formed a shovel brigade of six lines. Each person took a turn digging a shovel-full of dirt where a new access road will be constructed, leading around the building to a loading dock area. The building, originally the Hillside Church, is believed to have been constructed in the 1950s. It is undergoing extensive remodeling, which is expected to be finished before the end of the year. It will be used as a research center and a storage facility for ABC’s massive collection of more than 50,000 pieces of band music. The 6,000-square-foot building was purchased in part with proceeds from the sale of a house in Lebanon, donated to ABC by Gladys Wright. The native Oregonian attended high school in Wasco. She tells the story of how her high school band played in band contests each year but got beat out by the band from Arlington, which had a pretty good trumpet player named Doc Severinsen. Gladys Wright taught in Elmira schools just outside Eugene after graduation from the University of Oregon. She met her future husband, Al Wright, at the then-famous Gunnison Music Camp in Colorado. Since 1953 Gladys Wright has lived in West Lafayette, Indiana, where she taught music in area high schools. Her husband, who died two years ago at the age of 104, was a renowned clinician and director of bands at Purdue University for many years. Both Al and Gladys Wright were clinicians at the first-ever American Band College in 1989. They returned as clinicians in 2005, 2008 and 2011. Together they established several important band organizations: the John Philip Sousa Foundation, the National Band Association, the McDonald’s Band and Women Band Directors International. “They are two of the most important figures in our business,” said ABC founder and Executive Director Max McKee. “The center is named after them to honor their legacy.” Gladys Wright conducted Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” to close ABC’s June 26 concert at the Craterian Theater. ABC’s second concert will be at 7:30 July 4 at the Ashland High School football stadium. From 2016 until May of this year, ABC stored its music collection and other records in the library space inside Ashland’s Lincoln School. Before that, materials were kept at Southern Oregon University, where McKee was professor of music for 30 years. The collection has grown considerably over the years, much of it donated by publishers worldwide. The music is used at sight-reading clinics, and students perform the pieces as part of their coursework in the master’s degree program. The new facility will ease ABC’s growing pains. “We’ll utilize our high-density storage system in the new center,” Max McKee said, “which will leave room for prep work to assemble music folders for the large bands we have in Ashland each summer and in Seattle each November for the Western International Band Clinic.” The new center will be for storage and administrative work only, with no rehearsal spaces. Summer clinics and rehearsals are held at Ashland High School. “We use the school’s Mountain Avenue Theatre for four lectures each day of our summer program,” McKee said. ABC also uses the theater and the band room for rehearsals, rents the school’s kitchen facilities to prepare lunches for nearly 200 people daily, and conducts entrance exams and final written exams in other school rooms. For more information about ABC, go to bandworld.org/abc/ . Reach Ashland writer Jim Flint at [email protected].