Submitted by Moira Wilmes

Where do you start with accolades for someone who has so embodied the love and spirit of Pride Bands Alliance over the last 25 years that you wonder how they have not won this award before. For me, I start with my personal experience. I know Jadine as my first conductor in a LGBTQ+ band in San Francisco in 1998. She made quite an impression on me. Her style was welcoming, warm, contemplative, reserved but expressive. She managed to make our ensemble sound so good even when we were not at our best. I then got to work with Jadine directly when I joined band leadership and appreciated her even more as I learned just how much she gave to the organization. Not for pay, because in non-profit community bands, it is not a lot, but because of her love of music and the mission of the band. In doing research for this award, it became apparent that her contribution was not just in San Francisco but for all of Pride Bands Alliance.

Jadine Louie was the Artistic Director of the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band from 1996 – 2006 and then again from 2009 – 2012. It was destiny. As a child, Jadine 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 (which is also Jon Sims’ primary instrument), but earned an engineering degree and worked as a contractor for over a decade before joining the band and pursuing a full time profession in music.

Dubbed both the “perfect deadpan” and “spiritual center” of the Dance-Along Nutcracker® by the San Francisco Chronicle, Jadine explored the musical terrain from campy shtick to contemporary wind ensemble music with SFLGFB during her first and second tenures as Artistic Director. Jadine 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.

Jadine 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 San Francisco Pride Celebration. Jadine received the Jon Sims Award from the band in 1997. It is the highest honor the band gives.

Her impact as a female, person of color conductor was also groundbreaking during her years in San Francisco.

Jadine’s resume of artistic involvement with Pride Bands Alliance conferences, events and Member Bands’ concerts is also extremely impressive. She was involved in Artistic Direction with the Palm Springs/Desert Winds Freedom Band in 2005, 2007 & 2016, Chicago/Lakeside Pride Music Ensembles in 2006 for Gay Games (and now in 2022), Seattle/Rainbow City Band in 2011, Dallas/Oak Lawn Band where she conducted the City Trees premiere in 2012, Houston Pride Band in 2013, New York/The Lesbian & Gay Big Apple Corps in 2013, Cleveland/Blazing River Freedom Band in 2014 for Gay Games, Ft Lauderdale/South Florida Pride in 2014 and 2017 for their Youth Pride Band, Los Angeles/Gay Freedom Band in 2018 for their 40th anniversary and Orlando/Central Florida Sounds of Freedom and Colorguard in 2019. Jadine also agreed to share her insights with the Music as Meditation talk she did at the 2020 Tutti Conference which I had the honor of facilitating!