Online March Concert

On March 13th, APS announced that school would be closed until April 14th as part of an ongoing effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. Thankfully, the H-B Woodlawn Instrumental Music Department had almost all of the band and orchestra music recorded. Since they cannot have their concert at school for obvious reasons, here is their music for all to hear!

UPDATE: School has now been cancelled through the rest of the year. The musicians are currently working out ways to create music from their homes.

About the Directors

Carl Holmquist

Director of Bands

Carl Holmquist is a composer, conductor, and music educator. He is the Director of Bands and Fine Arts Department Chair at the H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program in Arlington, VA, where he teaches concert bands, jazz band, and music theory. He earned a BM in Music Education from St. Olaf College, where he studied conducting and composition with Timothy Mahr and Steven Amundson. He also earned a MM in Instrumental Conducting from George Mason University, where he studied with Mark Camphouse and Anthony Maiello.

As a composer, he has written numerous works for concert band, orchestra, chamber ensembles and vocal ensembles, and has been commissioned by middle school, high school, university, and community ensembles across the country. His works for band and string orchestra have been published by Alfred Publishing, C. Alan Publications , Bandworks Publications and Grand Mesa Music Publishers. Holmquist contributed a chapter to Volume 4 of the Composers on Composing for Band series, edited by Mark Camphouse and published by GIA Publications. He was one of three composers to participate in the 2008 Young Composer Mentor Project, sponsored by the National Band Association. Holmquist also received first prize in the 2006 Claude T. Smith Memorial Composition Contest for his work, Play!

In addition to his work at H-B Woodlawn, he maintains an active schedule serving as guest composer, conductor and clinician for school, community and honor ensembles and has presented at the Midwest International Band and Orchestra Clinic. Carl lives in Annandale, VA with his wife, Elizabeth, and two sons, William and Nathan. (carlholmquist.com)

Risa Browder

Director of Strings

Risa Browder was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and studied at Oberlin Conservatory, the Royal College of Music in London, and the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland. Her work as a violinist and violist has taken her all over Europe, Japan, Australia and the US. She has performed with many orchestras, among them, Academy of Ancient Music, the English Concert, London Classical Players, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra and as concertmaster with the Washington Bach Consort and Bach Sinfonia. As a chamber musician she has performed and recorded with the Purcell Quartet, London Baroque, REBEL and the Folger Consort. The Washington Post has said of her playing: “the most flavorful and expressive musicianship of the evening came from Risa Browder.”

Along with her husband, cellist John Moran, she co-directs the chamber orchestra Modern Musick which has performed to high acclaim in Washington. Ms. Browder is the orchestra director at H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program in Arlington, Virginia, teaches baroque violin and viola at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and co-directs their period instrument orchestra, Baltimore Baroque Band. She and her husband have two sons, one an artist and one a cellist.