Dr. John Bannon Conducts the Band and the College-Community Orchestra, teaches conducting and secondary/enrichment percussion at St. Petersburg College. He is the Principal Timpanist with The Florida Orchestra, and, during summers, coaches chamber music, conducts, performs, and teaches percussion at the Kinhaven Music School in Vermont. He previously served as Percussionist with the Florida Gulf Coast Symphony, as Principal Timpanist with the Anchorage Symphony, the Oklahoma Symphony, the Orquesta Sinfonica de Mineria in Mexico City, and the Honolulu Symphony, and as Conductor of the Oklahoma City University Concert Band and Wind Ensemble, the Oklahoma Youth Orchestra Wind Ensemble, and Associate Conductor of the University of Miami Symphony Orchestra. He has taught for thirty years as an adjunct to his professional performing career, and counts among his former students orchestral performers, music and non-music professors, business people, attorneys, and band officers in the U.S. military. Dr. Bannon was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, and received his early musical training in the public schools there and in St. Petersburg Florida, where he graduated from Northeast High School. He earned degrees in Percussion Performance from the University of South Florida (BA) and the University of Michigan (MM), and in Instrumental Conducting (DMA) from the University of Miami. John and his wife Carmen Newell Bannon, who is a flutist with the Florida West Coast Symphony in Sarasota, live in St. Petersburg with their two children.