John Irish Honored with ITG’s Bill Pfund Service Award
The International Trumpet Guild has awarded the Bill Pfund Service Award to Dr. John Irish in recognition of his longstanding and extraordinary service to the trumpet profession, music education, and the ITG community.
The award was presented in Texas by past ITG Presidents Alan Siebert and Leonard Candalaria. The honor reflects Irish’s decades of dedicated leadership within the organization, where he has served both as a member of the ITG Board of Directors and as an Officer in the position of Secretary.
The Bill Pfund Service Award honors individuals whose sustained, selfless efforts strengthen and uplift the global trumpet community. Irish, a retired Professor of Music at Angelo State University (ASU) in San Angelo, Texas, exemplifies these ideals through his distinguished career as an educator, performer, scholar, mentor, and advocate for brass performance.
Throughout his tenure at Angelo State University—where he directed the high brass studio and brass ensembles—and prior appointments at Wittenberg University and St. Mary’s University, Irish has mentored generations of musicians. His service extends deeply into music scholarship and journalism. Through a series of articles and frequent contributions to the International Trumpet Guild Journal he has helped preserve and illuminate the legacies of world-renowned trumpet artists for future generations. His writing has also appeared in Bandmasters Review, the Newsletter of the International Women’s Brass Conference, and The Brass Herald.
Irish’s performance background spans military, orchestral, and commercial settings. Following a distinguished career in the U.S. Air Force Band system—performing across all 50 states, Canada, Mexico, and Western Europe—he played with the Southwest German Radio Orchestra, San Antonio Symphony Orchestra, Dayton Philharmonic, and Omaha Symphony Orchestra. He currently serves as Principal Trumpet of the San Angelo Symphony Orchestra and is a co-founder of Jazz Concho, a professional local jazz sextet.
An active global clinician and soloist, Irish has conducted masterclasses and performed in Mexico, Taiwan, and across North America. Notable appearances include giving the world premiere of Brendan Collins' work for trumpet at the 36th Annual ITG Conference in Minneapolis, touring Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula as Principal Trumpet with Opera Maya, and serving as Co-Principal Trumpet at the International Music Festival in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Irish earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music and his MM and BM degrees from the University of Texas at San Antonio, studying under masters such as Bert Truax, Alan Siebert, John Carroll, Vince DiMartino, and Dale Marrs. He is a clinician/artist for the Conn-Selmer Company. (Source: Jason Dovel)
