Directors

Greg Dowe serves as the Director of Bands at Hempstead High School in Dubuque, Iowa, a position he has held the past thirteen years. Before starting his tenure at Hempstead, he was the Director of Bands at Cascade High School, where he taught for 13 years. During Greg’s tenure’s at Hempstead and Cascade, the bands have been consistent recipients of Division 1 ratings in State Marching, Jazz, and Concert band contests.

Starting his musical journey with drum corps in 1978. He played with the Decorah Kilties Drum and Bugle Corps, where he aged out in 1984. Throughout these seven years, Greg played soprano bugle. After aging out of the Decorah Kilties, Greg moved on to perform with the Dubuque Colts in 1985 where he played until aging out in 1991, After the 1991 season, Greg was asked to join the Brass staff, where he had the opportunity to learn first hand on the “other side of the horn” from Chuck Naffier, Dean Musson, Brett Hall, Jim Johnson, and Jeff Bridges.

After the 1992 season, Greg continued to work with the Brass – mainly mellophones – during the next four winters. In 1993, he took over as Staff/Program Coordinator and Brass-Captionhead with the Northmen from Green Bay, Wisconsin, until 1995. In 1997, Greg started to work with the Colt Cadets as Percussion Captionhead, while assisting Jim Johnson and Steffany King with marching duties.

Greg has been a member of the Iowa Bandmasters Association and Northeast Iowa Bandmasters Association since 1995. In 2004, he served as President of the Northeast Iowa Bandmasters Association (NEIBA), where he started the eight-year process to commission four works for their 50th Anniversary. With mentorship being one of the districts main priorities; the commissioning process took two concert band composers with ties to Iowa, composing music for the two high school honor bands, while acting as consultants/mentors for two young, up and coming Iowa composers, to write one song each for the middle school Honor Bands.

Greg currently resides in Cascade, Iowa, where he lives with his twelve year old daughter, Gillian.