Jadine Louie has returned to the San Francisco L/G Freedom Band as our Artistic Director.

Jadine Louie watched the Band’s first performance in the 1978 Pride parade perched in a tree near the main library. She was music director of two orchestras by the time she was twenty-one and majored in French horn, but earned an engineering degree and worked as a contractor for over a decade before joining the Band and pursuing a fulltime profession in music. Dubbed both the “perfect deadpan” and “spiritual center” of the Dance-Along Nutcracker by the San Francisco Chronicle, Ms. Louie has explored the terrain from campy shtick to contemporary wind ensemble music with SFL/GFB during her decade as Artistic director from 1996 to 2006. Ms. Louie brought to the Band’s Community Concerts a love of music written in our time and an ability to make complex musical ideas understandable to audiences at different levels of sophistication.  Ms. Louie guest conducted the 2008 Dance-Along Nutcracker®: A Nutcracker Carol.

Ms. Louie has been recognized for her work converting audiences to the cause of music as a vital component of community life as the Bay Guardian’s 2003 Best Justification for Music in the Public Schools and as 2002 Honorary Grand Marshall of the SF Pride Celebration. Louie currently plays French horn and teaches the next generation of musicians. She served as artistic director of the 2005 LGBA annual conference in Palm Springs in a program featuring the compositions of Frank Tichelli, who guest conducted, and served as a conductor for the LGBA massed band at Gay Games V in 2006 in Chicago. Other past conducting/coaching credits include All-City Honor Orchestra, SF Recreation Symphony, Symphonic Tornado, Swingfever Big Band, Bay Area Women’s Philharmonic, Golden Gate Opera, Oakland Civic Orchestra, Community Women’s Orchestra, and Prometheus Symphony.