Kenny Capshaw - Director Emeritus
- Kenneth Capshaw is currently the Director of Jazz Bands at the University of Texas at El Paso. He has been involved in music education in the El Paso community for over forty years, and was a band director in the El Paso Independent School District for twenty-five years. He began his teaching career at Henderson Middle School in 1972, and taught band at Morehead Middle School and El Paso High School before he went into business in 1981. His teaching career resumed in 1996, when he began his fifteen year tenure at Coronado High School. The concert, jazz, and marching bands at all of his schools have been consistent sweepstakes winners. The Coronado Marching Band has participated in the State Marching Contest three times, won a regional BOA Champion in Las Vegas in 2000, and has won the New Mexico State Tournament of Champions ten times. The Coronado High School Jazz Band has been winners at the Hanks Jazz Festival, the Texas Tech Jazz Festival, and the New Mexico State Jazz Festival. The concert bands at Coronado have been sweepstakes winners at UIL and EPISD festivals for sixteen consecutive years. The Coronado High School Band received the Texas Bandmasters Exemplary High School Band Award in July of 2012. Mr. Capshaw holds the associate principal trumpet position with the El Paso Symphony Orchestra, is a founding member of the forty year old El Paso Brass, and has performed with the Las Cruces, Juarez, and Roswell Symphony Orchestras. He has toured in Italy and England as a trumpet soloist with the Choir of the Southwest, and in Turkey and Germany as a member of the El Paso Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Capshaw has been a guest soloist, clinician, and adjudicator throughout the country for many years. He taught trumpet and jazz ensembles at New Mexico State University from 2012 to 2014. Mr. Capshaw is a member of the Texas Music Educator Association, the Texas Band Masters Association, and Phi Beta Mu. He received the Band World Legion of Honor Award in October of 2010 and the Texas Band Master Meritorious Achievement Award in July of 2011. He was inducted into the Phi Beta Mu Texas Bandmasters Hall of Fame in July of 2013. Kenneth and his wife, Louise, are proud parents of five children, and have five beautiful young grandchildren along with two foster grandchildren. They are a branch of the very musical family founded by Ross Capshaw, former Director of Fine Arts in the El Paso Independent School District and member of the TBA Hall of Fame.
Richard Lambrecht - Director Emeritus
Richard Lambrecht joined the music faculty of the University of Texas at El Paso in 1996. He has been playing Principal Horn in the El Paso Symphony Orchestra since his student days at UTEP (forty plus years). During his tenure with the orchestra he has also toured Germany and Turkey, as well as performing in the neighboring country of Mexico.
Rick is also a founding member of El Paso Brass, a quintet that has been performing together since 1972. In Brass in Class weekly performances for elementary and middle schools in the metropolitan El Paso area, he has performed for more than half a million students. El Paso Brass has also been featured performer with many symphony orchestras, and has played in New York City and at the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic.
Playing Principal Horn in the Roswell Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra de UAJC (Juarez, Mexico) and the El Paso Opera as well as being Instructor of Horn at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) round out his current activity as a hornist in the El Paso southwest area.
In addition to his career on the horn, Richard Lambrecht has had a long and successful career as a Texas Bandmaster. He began his teaching career at Coronado High School in El Paso and served as the band director there for thirty years. During his tenure as director, the Coronado Band garnered many awards, including both the Sousa Foundation’s Sudler Flag Of Honor for concert band and the Sudler Shield of Excellence for high school marching band. Coronado’s band gained fame across the southwest and eventually the nation as it won numerous competitions, performed on national television, and toured Mexico and Europe. Perhaps the highlight of his career at Coronado was the invitation from the Russian Ministry of Culture to perform as the only North American unit in the 1996 May Day celebrations in Moscow. During that trip, the band played a concert in the famed Tchaikovsky Hall, at Poklana Gora (World War 2 Memorial) and in Red Square for then-president Boris Yeltsin.
After Rick retired from Texas bands, he crossed the border to teach in Las Cruces, New Mexico, reviving an ailing program at Onate High School and raising it to State Champions in Concert Band the first year he was there.
Rick is an adjudicator, clinician and mentor for all levels of music. Marching bands, concert bands, and orchestras all clamor for his assistance as they prepare for performances and competitions. Rick has served on the Board of Directors of El Paso Symphony, is a former President of Texas Bandmasters Association, served as TMEA Band Chairman of Region 22 for twenty-five years and is the author of several articles for national music magazine, The Instrumentalist.
Rick’s family is important to him, and supportive of his many musical activities. His wife Barbara is a renowned band director, adjudicator, composer and clinician of national recognition. His two children: Richard, Jr., a teacher at El Paso Community College who also plays the Horn, and Chris, a band director in Klien, Texas at Klien High School, and Stepson Chris Prentice, an actor presently with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, bring him much pride and joy. Rick also has three grandsons: Ryan, Collin and Mason, who live much too far away.
Rick and Barbara enjoy being outdoors and rode a tandem bicycle across the US in 1998 covering 4,200 miles. They left on the last day of school and made it coast to coast just in time for the first day of school. In between concert performances, judging contests, mentoring young teachers, and teaching private lessons, they currently enjoy traveling in their Airstream trailer and hanging out at their mountain house in Cloudcroft, New Mexico.
Rick is also a founding member of El Paso Brass, a quintet that has been performing together since 1972. In Brass in Class weekly performances for elementary and middle schools in the metropolitan El Paso area, he has performed for more than half a million students. El Paso Brass has also been featured performer with many symphony orchestras, and has played in New York City and at the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic.
Playing Principal Horn in the Roswell Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra de UAJC (Juarez, Mexico) and the El Paso Opera as well as being Instructor of Horn at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) round out his current activity as a hornist in the El Paso southwest area.
In addition to his career on the horn, Richard Lambrecht has had a long and successful career as a Texas Bandmaster. He began his teaching career at Coronado High School in El Paso and served as the band director there for thirty years. During his tenure as director, the Coronado Band garnered many awards, including both the Sousa Foundation’s Sudler Flag Of Honor for concert band and the Sudler Shield of Excellence for high school marching band. Coronado’s band gained fame across the southwest and eventually the nation as it won numerous competitions, performed on national television, and toured Mexico and Europe. Perhaps the highlight of his career at Coronado was the invitation from the Russian Ministry of Culture to perform as the only North American unit in the 1996 May Day celebrations in Moscow. During that trip, the band played a concert in the famed Tchaikovsky Hall, at Poklana Gora (World War 2 Memorial) and in Red Square for then-president Boris Yeltsin.
After Rick retired from Texas bands, he crossed the border to teach in Las Cruces, New Mexico, reviving an ailing program at Onate High School and raising it to State Champions in Concert Band the first year he was there.
Rick is an adjudicator, clinician and mentor for all levels of music. Marching bands, concert bands, and orchestras all clamor for his assistance as they prepare for performances and competitions. Rick has served on the Board of Directors of El Paso Symphony, is a former President of Texas Bandmasters Association, served as TMEA Band Chairman of Region 22 for twenty-five years and is the author of several articles for national music magazine, The Instrumentalist.
Rick’s family is important to him, and supportive of his many musical activities. His wife Barbara is a renowned band director, adjudicator, composer and clinician of national recognition. His two children: Richard, Jr., a teacher at El Paso Community College who also plays the Horn, and Chris, a band director in Klien, Texas at Klien High School, and Stepson Chris Prentice, an actor presently with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, bring him much pride and joy. Rick also has three grandsons: Ryan, Collin and Mason, who live much too far away.
Rick and Barbara enjoy being outdoors and rode a tandem bicycle across the US in 1998 covering 4,200 miles. They left on the last day of school and made it coast to coast just in time for the first day of school. In between concert performances, judging contests, mentoring young teachers, and teaching private lessons, they currently enjoy traveling in their Airstream trailer and hanging out at their mountain house in Cloudcroft, New Mexico.