Sheldon Bair is the Founder and Music Director of the Susquehanna Symphony Orchestra (SSO – Maryland), a community orchestra of over 80 members currently in its 50th season. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Elizabethtown College (Pennsylvania) and a master’s degree from Towson University (Maryland). In addition, his post-graduate studies include classes at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. Bair has studied conducting with Witold Rowicki in Vienna and with Leonid Grin.

 

Bair taught orchestra and other music classes for 40 years for the Harford County Public School system (Maryland) and is an adjunct faculty member at Harford Community College. He is often invited to serve as a conductor, clinician, and adjudicator of youth orchestras and soloists.

 

Bair, a member of ASCAP, has composed over twenty works for student string orchestra (published by Howard Publications in Maryland) and has composed and arranged many works for orchestra, concert band, and church choir. His Christmas music is published by Presser Publishing in Philadelphia and his arrangements can be found on the Sheet Music Plus website. His “The Homefront 1944” was premiered in November 2022 by the Worthing Symphony Orchestra and was also performed by the Ealing Symphony, both in England.

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Honors:

• Inducted into the Harford County Educator Hall of Fame in 2018​​

• Bair is the seventh 'teacher' in Skip Prichard's best-selling self-help book The Book of Mistakes.

• 2025 Finalist in the American Prize in Composition, Orchestral Professional Division, for "The Homefront 1944"

• Named a "Harford County Living Treasure" by the County Council in 2025.

• Inducted into the Inaugural Class of the Susquehanna Township High School (Harrisburg, PA) Hall of Fame in 2026. Bair was a 1972 graduate.