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Please click the artistic director's name for a full biography.
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John William “Buzz” Jones is Professor of Music at Gettysburg College’s Sunderman Conservatory of Music in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Buzz coordinates the theory and composition program and teaches jazz history. During his tenure as Director of Bands (1989-2002), the program grew in size from thirty-five to ninety musicians performing over twenty concerts annually. He also served as department chair from 1999-2005 and conservatory director from 2006-08. Buzz has directed the college jazz ensemble for twnety years and led the group on four summer tours of Europe with appearances at the Montreux, North Sea, and Vienne Jazz Festivals.
Born in Bryn Mawr (Welsh for “high hill”) on the outskirts of Philadelphia, he earned degrees in music education from Lebanon Valley College and Towson University and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Temple University. He was a public school music teacher for seven years in Howard County, Maryland before returning to Pennsylvania in the 1980s to direct the band program at Dickinson College and work in the retail music industry.
The Buzz Jones Big Band was founded in 1979. This sixteen member ensemble is recognized as the very best of its genre in the Mid-Atlantic States. The BJBB has traveled to Germany, France, and The Netherlands with appearances at the North Sea and Montreux Jazz Festivals and released four compact discs since 1995. The Majestic Jazz Orchestra was created in 2003 for the express purpose of performing and recording Axiom Asunder, a four episode suite tracing the history of jazz and linked by the poetry of Langston Hughes. Buzz also conducted the Cymru Chamber Orchestra at the Welsh International Gymanfa Ganu, traveled to Wales and England on a six concert tour, and performed at the North American Association for the Study of Welsh Culture.
Buzz is a twelve-time ASCAPLUS Standard Award winner in composition. His commissioned works for concert band, jazz ensemble, chamber groups, and orchestra and choir have been performed widely and received enthusiastically by audiences of all ages. His most current project is an oratorio for brass band, vocal soloists, and woodwind octet celebrating the Lincoln Bi-centennial to be premiered in November, 2009. He has been awarded grants from the Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts, the Adams County Arts Council, and the National Welsh-American Foundation and received the Creative Arts Achievement Award from his alma mater, Lebanon Valley College.
Buzz is a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, Phi Beta Mu (International Bandmasters Fraternity), Music Educators National Conference, the Pennsylvania Music Educators Association, and is Past President of the International Association for Jazz Education-Pennsylvania. He resides in Gettysburg with his wife Gail, an elementary school music teacher. For more information: http://www.buzzjones.net
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The Gettysburg Festival’s Artistic Director for Brass, Ben Jones was born in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania and grew up nearby on a farm along the Woodstock Road close to Fayetteville. His parents enjoyed music and encouraged his piano study, starting in second grade, as well as many instrumental and choral performance experiences.
Ben is retired after a 35-year music teaching career in the Upper Adams and Gettysburg School Districts. He earned degrees from Susquehanna University and Penn State and holds certificates in music supervision and school administration. Ben has served as a volunteer on the Gettysburg Brass Band Festival planning committee for 12 years and has directed the Gettysburg Tuba Carol Fest for 13 years. He has served in volunteer capacities at his church, as part of the Gettysburg Recreation Department Sunday in the Park Concert Series planning committee and the Adams County Arts Council Board of Directors. Ben is a tuba player and has performed with the Keystone Brass, the Harrisburg Symphonic Band, the Harrisburg City Band, the American Legion Post 27 Band of Harrisburg and the Lyric Band of Hanover. He founded and directed the Gettysburg Brass Band. Ben currently is director of the Gettysburg Tuba Carol Fest, which celebrated its 13th anniversary in 2008, and the Gettysburg Festival Brass. He performs with the Gettysburg Brassworks and the Sand Trap Brass as well as free lance work from time to time. Ben was a student of James Steffy at Susquehanna University.
Ben is married to Jane, the award winning classroom music teacher and wonderful pianist. They are the proud parents of an accomplished son and daughter, BJ and Carrie. When the temperature is above 50, Ben can usually be found on the golf course somewhere in Adams County or beyond. Ben's heroes, in addition to Jane, BJ and Carrie, are folks who make music purely for the love of doing so. A favorite quote of Ben's is "... when you see a town with flourishing enterprises, such as newspapers, schools, libraries, picture galleries, literary and scientific societies, concert halls, theaters, brass bands, etc., we need not be told that it is the dwelling place of intelligent and cultivated people...."
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 Norman K. Nunamaker, Conductor and Manager of The Gettysburg Festival Orchestra, is Professor Emeritus of Music at Gettysburg College where he was a member of the Music Department for 33 years. His graduate studies were completed at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he received both his M.M. and Ph.D. While at Indiana University, he was the Manager of the Opera Orchestra and was a Teaching Assistant during all four years as a graduate student. He studied violin with Daniel Guilet, of the Beaux Arts Trio, and Urico Rossi, of the Berkshire Quartet. Further violin studies were completed at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. At Gettysburg College, he served a term as Chairman of the Music Department and taught courses in Music History and Literature, Music Theory, and Music Appreciation, as well as teaching violin and viola and conducting the College Community Orchestra. He was the former Director of the Potomac Symphony Orchestra, Conductor of the Maryland Theatre Orchestra, Director of the Gilbert and Sullivan Productions of the Maryland Theatre, Director of the Millbrook Chamber Orchestra, Director of the Shippensburg Festival Chamber Orchestra, Director of the Harrisburg Civic Opera in two productions, and has been the Associate Conductor of the York Symphony for over 20 years, where he is also Associate Concertmaster. After retiring from Gettysburg College, Norman and his wife, Carolyn, founded the Gettysburg Chamber Orchestra that recently celebrated its 10th Anniversary. This fully professional ensemble has proudly presented many local artists, both as members and as soloists, and has brought back many professional musicians who received their early training in Gettysburg.
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 Walter Scheib
(White House Executive Chef, 1994 – 2005)
"For the last eleven years, I have had the honor of doing daily what most chefs would be lucky to do once in their life time. That honor was serving the First Family of the United States.”
- Walter Scheib, March 2005
Walter Scheib has quite a story to tell. In fact, he has two stories to tell. The first involves the rise of an American chef to the most storied position in the land. The second offers an intimate, human view of two First Families, the corridors of political power, international personalities, and the most famous building in the United States, from a unique vantage point: The kitchen.
In April 1994, after a lengthy application and screening process, Walter Scheib became the chef to America’s chief executive and the First Family. First Lady Hillary Clinton, impressed by the comprehensive spa menu Scheib had developed for the Greenbrier resort, as well as his highlighting of American cuisine, personally hired Scheib. For 11 years, he prepared everything from simple family meals to elaborate and formal State Dinners. His culinary creations dazzled and delighted White House guests including Nelson Mandela, Emperor Aikihito, Jacques Chirac, Boris Yeltsin, Vaclav Havel, Lady Diana Spencer, Tony Blair, Vicente Fox, and others, not to mention the thousands of congressional members, journalists, and other House visitors who got to know his food.
A highlight of Scheib’s White House achievement was his creation of a distinctly American repertoire for the nation’s First House. He continues to speak with eloquence and pride about America’s bounty today, praising the artisan cheese makers, green grocers, mushroom foragers, master bread makers, fishermen, ranchers, and farmers who have helped our national market basket evolve, and make quality cooking more accessible than ever. “America is rich in amazing produce, meats, and fish,” Scheib says. “Using just a few excellent ingredients, anyone can make a perfect meal with very little formal training.”
THE AMERICAN CHEF™ is the name Scheib has taken for his new corporation. Since he returned to private life, Scheib has founded The American Chef™, the company through which he shares his knowledge of the development of American cuisine at the White House, as well as White House remembrances, with audiences across the country. His special events often aim to bring together business leaders, using group cooking as a method of team bonding. They also offer home entertainers and party planners unique approaches to special events. For cooking schools, cooking demonstrations and lectures, Scheib teaches classes ranging from State Dinner Secrets to throwing a White House Birthday Party.
The American Chef™ offers a multitude of special-event concepts such as White House style cocktail receptions, First Lady Luncheons, State Dinners, and Outdoor “South Lawn” barbecues and picnics. His educational and entertaining sessions and demonstrations are filled with fascinating White House insider's anecdotes, culinary insights, team building and bonding, as well as, exercises with a culinary twist. Sessions frequently feature hands-on cooking demonstrations with audience participation and interaction.
Food is Scheib’s lifelong passion. He discovered his mother’s pots and pans early in life and soon felt comfortable preparing meals for parents and friends. By the time he graduated from high school, he was eager to pursue a profession in the culinary arts. He attended the Culinary Institute of America, from which he graduated with high honors in 1979. Immediately thereafter, Scheib started as a Rounds Cook at a premier Washington, D.C. hotel, and within three years was promoted to Executive Chef. Before coming to the Greenbrier and then the White House, he served as Executive Chef at other major hotels and resorts such as the Boca Raton Resort and Club.
The American Chef™ has become a great success. Scheib has developed a very popular speaking approach regaling guests with interesting, informative and often humorous anecdotes from his years in the White House. Scheib has made numerous appearances, both national and local. On the CBS Early Show, he demonstrated how to make a “presidential burger”…on the Fourth of July, no less. Additional television appearances include The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the CBS Early Show, Good Morning America, Weekend Today in New York, Nightline and Iron Chef on the Food Network Station. Newspaper and Magazine stories and interviews about his company and his food have been seen in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The U.S. News and World Report, in addition to other articles. Please visit the americanchef.com for the full text of these articles. He is the co-author of the newly published White House Chef: Eleven Years, Two Presidents, One Kitchen, which was released in January 2007.
Scheib is an avid fisherman and still enjoys cooking as much as he did as a child, and at the White House. He lives in Great Falls, Virginia, with his wife, Jean, and their two sons, Walter and Jim.
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Artistic Director for Jazz
Artistic Director for Brass
Artistic Director for Classical Music 
Artistic Director for Culinary Events
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