Artistic Staff

Carl J. Bianchi, Conductor, American Youth Symphonic Orchestra

The 2007-2008 season marks Carl (Jeff) Bianchi’s seventeenth year as the conductor of the American Youth Symphonic Orchestra and the eleventh year as the director of Virginia’s Ambassadors of Music to Europe. He is also a member of the Phi Beta Mu, and is a current member, as well as a past Member-at-Large on Board of Directors of the National Band Association (NBA). A noted clinician, adjudicator and conductor, Mr. Bianchi was elected to membership in the prestigious American Bandmasters Association (ABA) in 1987; in 2003 he was elected to ABA's board of director, in 2005 was elected as its Vice President and in 2006 was elected as its President-Elect.

In 1997, Mr. Bianchi retired as the Director of Bands at James Madison High School after serving Fairfax Country for 29 years. Under Mr. Bianchi’s baton the James Madison High School Band represented Virginia at the annual Mid-West International Band and Orchestra Clinic in 1980 and 1992, and was called the “Pride of Vienna & Vienna’s Ambassadors of Goodwill” by the Town Council of Vienna, Virginia. Following its first appearance at the Mid-West Clinic in 1980, the band performed at the New York Directors Symposium, the Mid-East Clinic, Virginia Music Educators Association (VMEA) and ASBDA conventions, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the Filene Center for the Performing Arts at Wolf Trap Farm Park. The band has been cited in the Congressional Record for musical excellence; and in 1990, Colonel John R. Bourgeois, Director of the United States Marine Band, presented the Sudler Flag of Honor to the band. For three years (1995-97) the band won the “Young Artists in the Community” award sponsored by WGMS (the good music station) for the entire Washington Metropolitan Area.

Mr. Bianchi graduated from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where he earned a Bachelor of Music and a Performer’s Certificate in French Horn. While attending Eastman, he played solo horn with the Eastman Wind Ensemble under Frederick Fennell and also toured Europe, the Middle East, and the Soviet Union with the Eastman Philharmonia Orchestra under the auspices of the State Department.

From 1964-68, Mr. Bianchi played with the U. S. Marine Band in Washington, D.C. He did his graduate work at Catholic University. He has also performed with the National Gallery Orchestra, the Washington Ballet Company Orchestra, the Washington Opera Society, and the National Ballet Company Orchestra as well as the Philharmonic Orchestras of St. Louis, Rochester and Buffalo. In 1971, he was a member of the original cast of the world premiere of Leonard of Bernstein’s Mass, at the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.