Kirk Wassmer has just retired after a 35-year career teaching band across western Canada.  For the past 23 years he was at Didsbury High School in Didsbury, Alberta, a rural community north of Calgary where more than half of the school’s population was involved in the Music Program.  In addition to numerous local and regional performances, groups from Didsbury High School travelled across Canada and internationally to Scotland, England and Spain.  Ensembles from DHS consistently received high accolades for their concert and festival performances.  Prior to Didsbury Kirk taught at G.P. Vanier Secondary School in Courtenay, BC and at Revelstoke Secondary School.  Students from all of Kirk’s programs can be found across Western Canada performing and teaching music. Kirk received his undergraduate degree from the University of Saskatchewan, and he has a Master of Music from the University of Missouri – Columbia.  He has served on the Boards of the Alberta Band Association, the Canadian Band Association and the Coalition for Music Education in Canada.  Kirk remains active as a clinician and adjudicator, and he has been a part of the Kamloops Interior Summer School of Music, a three-week K-12 summer music program, since 2015. In 2008, he was honoured to be recognized as a semi-finalist in Alberta Education’s Excellence in Teaching Awards.  In 2017 Kirk received the David Peterkin Award in recognition of exemplary and consistent contribution to bands and band education from the Mu Alpha chapter of Phi Beta Mu.  In 2019 he was presented with the Elkhorn Band Director of the Year award by the Alberta Band Association, and in 2022 received the Vondis Miller Legacy Award.  In 2024, Kirk was awarded the Keith Mann/National Arts Centre Outstanding Band Director Award from MusicFest – The Nationals, and was also honoured to receive a Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence and a King Charles III Coronation Medal in recognition of Kirk’s innovation and dedication to student success in band and in life.