Shelley Hanson

Clarinet instructor Shelley Hanson is the founding director of the Macalester College Wind Symphony. A clinician and guest conductor for high school, university, and community groups and for state and national music conferences, she is also on the artistic staff of the Minnesota Youth Symphonies. Prior to Macalester, she conducted orchestras, wind ensembles, and other groups at several colleges and universities. Her compositions and arrangements have been performed on all continents except Antarctica, and are published by Boosey & Hawkes, Hal Leonard, and C. Alan Publications. Her music has been analyzed in major publications including the Teaching Music Through Performance and the Band Masterworks series. Principal Clarinetist of the Minneapolis Pops Orchestra, she has been a featured soloist with the Milwaukee Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Rochester Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Las Vegas Philharmonic, Minneapolis Pops Orchestra, and U.S. Air Force Band (Washington, D.C.), among many others. She was a soloist for the soundtrack of the feature film Out of the Wilderness, and has recorded as an orchestral and chamber musician for Virgin Records, Teldec, American Composers’ Forum and other labels. An experienced studio musician and producer, she has played for commercials, films, and pop music, and has conducted orchestras and other groups at major studios including Paisley Park. Her klezmer band, Klezmer & All That Jazz, recorded traditional and her original music for the Audie Award-winning National Public Radio/Dove Audio production of the classic Yiddish play The Dybbuk. Her band piece Albanian Dance was featured in Atom Egoyan’s most recent film, Guest of Honour. A graduate of Duke University, she received the M.M., Woodwind Specialist, and the Ph.D. in performance, music literature, and music theory from Michigan State University.