On the special Pre-Christmas Events Calendar for this week is a concert in the Superior Auditorium presented by the Flatwater Jazz Orchestra. The orchestra features two Superior residents Vickie Nielsen and Jennifer Cady and one former resident, Haley West. The concert starts at 7 p.m. Saturday. The auditorium will open earlier for a food option. For more details see the advertisement in this issue.
Four hundred Superior Bucks were awarded in a drawing held Monday morning. Winners were Gloria Havens, Deb Brown, Scott Oltmans and Dave Tietjen. The final drawing of this holiday season will be held Monday when a lucky person will receive 500 hundred of the Superior Bucks which may be spent like cash in participating Superior stores.
Candy Cane Lane will be open each evening from 6 to 9 through Dec. 31.
The First United Methodist Church plans a Blue Christmas remembrance service starting at 7:15 one week from today (Thursday, Dec. 21.)
The Flatwater Jazz group has been making music in the heartland since 2015 and expects to have 21 musicians on the auditorium stage this Saturday evening. The group has been described as a traditional big band and is made up of some of the finest musicians from around Central Nebraska. The band plays a variety of music from classics of the swing era to modern big band music. The group values having younger players join more experienced players in an attempt to train the next generation of young artists.
Biographies of some of the musicians expected to be with the group on Saturday include the following:
Nathan LeFeber
Nathan LeFeber, native to Nebraska, received a master’s degree in trombone performance from the University of Iowa. He has been teaching instrumental music since 2003. He is currently serving as president of band directors fraternity. He has worked as an adjudicator for many high school and middle school music contests as well as serving as a guest conductor for numerous honor bands across the state, including the Class B and Class C All-State bands.
In addition to his teaching schedule, LeFeber has also performed on trombone with a number of professional ensembles. For the past several summers, he has toured Germany with the German-American 12-piece brass ensemble, Eurobrass.
Brian Botsford
Brian Botsford, a Kearney native, graduated UNK in 2000 with a bachelor’s‑ degree in music education and UNL in 2015 with a master’s degree in music education. After eleven years as the vocal music instructor and assistant instrumental music instructor at Bishop Neumann High School in Wahoo, Nebraska. He is now the sixth through twelfth grade vocal music instructor at Lexington Public Schools in Lexington, Nebraska. Botsford is the choir director at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church of Kearney. He’s a founding board member of Crane River Theater and also serves on the boards for Kearney Concert Association, Platte River Singers and the Nebraska Arts Council. In 2014 he was a recipient of the Nebraska Arts Council Governor’s Arts Award for Emerging Leadership.
Tim Farrell
Tim Farrell is professor of music at the University of Nebraska-Kearney. He teaches applied high brass,music education courses and directs the Jazz-Rock Ensemble.
Farrell is a Yamaha Performing Artist. He can be seen on the Sound Innovations trumpet DVD by Alfred Music and recently collaborated on The Sound Artistry Intermediate Method for Trumpet, also published by Alfred Music.
Bruce Batterson
Bruce Batterson has provided sound reinforcement services for music performances, theatrical productions and other events for many years. A retired lawyer, Batterson teaches business classes at Hastings College. He works regularly with several regional performers and venues, including the Listening Room, Inc., which owns and operates the Lark in Hastings, the Hastings Symphony Orchestra, Hastings Community Theatre, Hastings College, and the Golden Husk Theatre in Ord.
Chris Stelling
Chris Stelling is an adjunct professor of music and director of the Jazz Ensemble at Hastings College. He is a 20 year veteran of the United States Air Force Band career field (Offutt AFB, NE, Langley AFB, VA) where he served as professional saxophonist, featured soloist, music arranger and director to audiences of over one million people during his military career.
Jonathan Reece
Jonathan Reece is a native of Wahoo. He studied Trombone Performance at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. He moved to Anchorage, Alaska in 2008 where be fell in love with the outdoors. Reece married his wife, Stacy and stayed at home to raise their four children. Moving back to Nebraska recently, Reece has found a new career as an assistant golf professional at the Kearney Country Club while receiving his certification as a PGA professional. He continues to be active with his family both in music and the outdoors as much as possible.
Rick Mitchell
Rick Mitchell has been teaching since 1993 and has been at Kearney High School since 2000 as an instrumental music instructor, music department chair and Tri M sponsor. He also taught at Schuyler Central High School, Elm Creek Schools, served as adjunct brass faculty at the University of Nebraska-Kearney, and established Kearney’s first Kindermusik studio. Mitchell is a trumpet player that performs in both the classical and jazz styles and has performed with groups including the Columbus Jazz Orchestra, Dobytown Brass Quintet, Flatwater Jazz Orchestra and the Kearney Symphony Orchestra.
Daniel McCarty
Daniel McCarty is a student at UNK. He is a trumpet player who has been a part of groups such as The National Youth Wind Ensemble, The Macy’s Great American Marching Band, and The National Intercollegiate Band.
Lew Cole
Lew Cole, received a masters degree in music education from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln in 1986. Since college, he has been an active trumpet performer playing in numerous concert bands, jazz bands, and brass ensembles along with many solo performances at weddings and church worship services.
He retired in 2018 after a 40-year teaching career in which he taught band for eight years at Davenport, Nebraska, and 32 years at Barr Middle School in Grand Island.
Grant Cole
Grant Cole was born and raised in Grand Island, and graduated from the University of Nebraska Omaha in Spring 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Mathematics. He regularly performs in the Lincoln and Omaha areas. He currently works at Ludacka Wealth Partners, a comprehensive wealth management firm in Omaha. Cole continues to pursue his passion for bebop and big band music through his trumpet playing.
Byron W. Jensen
Byron W. Jensen, recently retired from Hastings College as Distinguished Professor in Music and as conductor-artistic director of the Hastings Symphony Orchestra. Jensen’s teaching and conducting career spans 45 years, leading classroom experiences and music ensembles ranging from kindergarteners to professionals.
Jeff Stelling
Jeff Stelling is the owner of Stelling Brass & Winds; a complete musical instrument repair and custom horn building shop. Stelling started repairing instruments part-time in 1989 while he attended UNK as a music business major. Stelling began repairing and building instruments on a full-time basis in the spring of 1997. He is regularly asked to present, repair and customize clinics throughout the United States.
Sadie Uhing
Sadie Uhing is a Nebraska native from Hartington and is currently a senior at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.She is pursuing her bachelor’s in music education and music performance on trumpet. She has just completed her student teaching this Fall. She is looks forward to graduation and studying abroad in Germany under trumpet player Anthony Plog. She has been competitively selected as the UNK 2022 Concerto Competition winner.
John Martin Petzet
John Martin Petzet is associate professor of music and director of choral activities at the University of Nebraska-Kearney. He conducts the Choraleers, Collegium, men’s and women’s Choruses, and teaches secondary choral methods and Choral Conducting. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he taught middle school and high school for 5 years. Furthermore, he has conducted honor choirs across Louisiana and in Colorado, was invited to teach at the West Texas Choral Workshop, and to teach, present, and conduct at La Universidad Autonoma De Ciudad Juarez and to work with the Anaima Ensamble Vocal in Juarez, Mexico.
Chris Steinke
Chris Steinke plays alto saxophone and is an associate professor of history at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. He has appeared on recordings by the UNL Jazz Ensemble I (Beyond the Plains), pianist Tom Larson (Flashback), and trumpeter Pablo Masis (Half Past).
Haley West
Haley West has graduated from Superior High School and is currently a senior at the University of Nebraska- Kearney. She is pursuing her bachelor’s in music education pre-kindergarten through twelveth grades with a primary emphasis on trombone. She plans to start student teaching this spring. She is currently with Wind Ensemble, the Kearney Symphony Orchestra, and a Jazz-Rock Ensemble.
Kristen Hanich
Kristen Hanich, a Kearney native, earned a bachelor’s degree in Music Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She continued formal music study with Dr. Eugene Rousseau at the University of Minnesota and was awarded the degree of doctor of musical arts in saxophone performance. During her graduate work, Hanich competed as a classical saxophone soloist in the Internationaler Musikwettbewerb der ARD (Munich, Germany 2001) and the 3rd Concours International Adolphe Sax (Dinant, Belgium 2002). Hanich is a career music educator and musician.
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