Jeffrey Bell-Hanson

Jeffrey Bell-Hanson retired in May 2023, following 21 years as Music Director of the Pacific Lutheran University Symphony Orchestra. He remains a familiar presence in the Pacific Northwest as a conductor, clinician, adjudicator and orchestral educator. Each year he works with school orchestras at all levels throughout the region and beyond, bringing to them the perspective of his long career as a conductor and scholar. He is a past national president of the College Orchestra Directors Association.

Dr. Bell-Hanson has conducted orchestras and wind ensembles throughout the United States and in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, including the West Bohemian Symphony Orchestra, the Olympia Symphony, the Marquette Symphony Orchestra, the Vratza Philharmonic, and the Philharmonia Bulgarica. His long career on the podium and as a teacher has also included faculty appointments in Kansas, Louisiana, and Michigan, where he won recognition for excellence in teaching both from Michigan Technological University and the State of Michigan. He has served as music director of both the Hutchinson Symphony Orchestra in Kansas and, for fourteen years, the Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra in Michigan. His early research focused on orchestral music of the mid-eighteenth century. More recently, he has been researching and writing on the formation of vocational commitments for young musicians.