our music director

Dr. Andy Collinsworth has conducted the non-profit, all volunteer Saint Helena Community Band in performances throughout the Napa Valley since 2012.

Dr. Collinsworth received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Conducting from Arizona State University, and he holds degrees in music education and in saxophone performance from the University of Nevada at Reno. He maintains an active schedule as a guest conductor, adjudicator and clinician. He is the founder and artistic director of the Sonoma Invitational Wind Band Festival, an annual event featuring performances by high school bands from around the state. He also leads the Sonoma Summer Band Conducting and Music Education Symposium, an annual weeklong conducting seminar for high school and middle school music educators.

He also leads the Sonoma State University (SSU) Symphonic Wind Ensemble and Chamber Winds Ensemble, and teaches courses in conducting, instrumental music methods, and music education. As Director of the Music Education program at SSU, he advises and guides students aspiring to become music educators and supervises graduate students in the single subject credential program in music.

In addition to his university duties, Dr. Collinsworth is an active member of several professional organizations. He currently serves as President-Elect for the Western Division of the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA), and as Immediate Past-President of the Bay Section of the California Music Educators Association (CMEA). In addition to these organizations, he is a member of the National Association of Music Education, the California Band Directors Association, the Northern California Band Directors Association, and is an honorary member of the Kappa Kappa Psi band fraternity.

In 2014 Dr. Collinsworth received the John Swain Outstanding University Music Educator Award for outstanding contributions to music education at the collegiate level by the California Music Educators Association. In 2011, he received the CMEA Don Schmeer/Byron Hoyt Band Educator Award honoring excellence in instrumental instruction and performance.

In March 2024, Dr. Collinsworth was inducted at ABA Convention. As part of the ceremonies, he conducted a performance of Autumn Walk, a 1958 composition by American composer Julian Work that Dr. Collinsworth recently revised and edited, with the United States Navy Concert Band, Washington D.C.

Selection to the American Bandmasters Association is considered to be a pinnacle of achievement for wind band conductors. Membership in the ABA is determined by a nomination and election process. Nominees are selected by a committee and must submit performance recordings and a curriculum vitae demonstrating musical excellence and expertise. Recordings and documentation are reviewed and then voted upon by the membership
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The American Bandmasters Association was founded in 1928 by renowned band leader Edwin Franko Goldman, leader of the famed Goldman Concert Band in New York, as an organization promoting excellence in the wind band field. Other notable members in its nearly 100-year history include John Philip Sousa (who served as the first ABA president), Percy Grainger, Arthur Pryor, Henry Fillmore, Karl L. King, Gustav Holst, Albert Austin Harding, Mark Hindsley and Glenn Cliffe Bainum, to name a few. Current members represent some of the most prominent band conductors and composers from around the country.