About the Conductor

Erik Janners, Music Director of the Knightwind Ensemble, is internationally recognized as a conductor, scholar and performer. He holds degrees in percussion and conducting from Alma College, the University of Utah, and the University of Alabama.

Dr. Janners currently serves as the Director of Music at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At Marquette he supervises the overall music program, and conducts the University wind ensemble, orchestra, and pep bands. Prior to his arrival at Marquette in the fall of 2007, he served as Director of Bands at Saint Xavier University in Chicago, Illinois, as well as at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada.

In addition to his teaching duties, Dr. Janners has served as guest conductor, clinician and adjudicator, and presented a series of clinics on performance psychology at the State Music Conferences of Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, and Alabama, and the Midwest Clinic in Chicago, Illinois. He has also served as conductor of the National Band Association College All-Star Band, on the conducting staff for the Blue Lake Fine Arts summer camps, and as a pre-concert lecturer for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

International opportunities have included a collaboration with the Italian conductor Filippo Salemmi as a part of the International Music Project, and in July 2016 Dr. Janners conducted a series of concerts in Italy, Germany and Austria. He led a study abroad program from Marquette University performing in Cesena, Pesaro and Salerno, Italy in Summer 2017, was a featured clinician and guest conductor at the IX Forum of the Baltic States Wind Orchestra Conductors in Riga, Latvia, and served as a masterclass teacher at the Conservatorio Bruno Maderna in Cesena, Italy. In July 2018 Dr. Janners conducted Franz Schubert’s Deutshe Messe in the Basilica of Montecassino, Italy, and at the Basilica Superiore di Assisi in Assisi, Italy.

As a scholar, Dr. Janners has had numerous articles published in the Instrumentalist magazine, as well as in Canadian Winds, the national periodical of the Canadian Band Association, and Alta Musica, the publication of the IGEB wind music conference. His research interests include wind band literature, conducting pedagogy and technique, and performance psychology in its application to the field of music. He is a member of the National Band Association, College Music Society, The World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles (WASBE), the College Band Director’s National Association (CBDNA), the Conductor’s Guild, and the International Society for the Research and Promotion of Wind Music (IGEB).