Stephen Goacher, M.M.

Stephen Goacher, Professor of Music, has served on the faculty of Howard Payne University since 1999, teaching woodwind instruments and conducting Winds of Triumph and the Jazz Ensemble.  He conducted Winds of Triumph on tours in Paris, France: the 2012 London Summer Olympics; Mexico, Colorado, Texas, and the NBA Faith and Family Project.  The HPU Jazz Ensemble has performed for the North Texas Jazz Festival, the Temple Jazz Festival and for the ATSSB/TMEA.  Prior to teaching at HPU, Mr. Goacher taught for 25 years at Stephen F. Austin State University, Kansas State University, and Northern Kentucky University.

Known as a specialist in Woodwind Performance, Mr. Goacher was the first doctoral candidate in Woodwinds at Indiana University permitted to perform doctoral recitals on all of the woodwind instruments.  He holds the first Master of Music in Woodwinds from TCU.  Although a clarinet major at UCLA, he was twice awarded a prize in the Atwater-Kent Outstanding Musician Award on alto saxophone.  Mr. Goacher has given clinics and concerts on multiple woodwind performance at the University of Wisconsin at Shell Lake, the University of Michigan, and twice for the North American Saxophone Alliance.  On his 2008 CD, Leaving A Testimony, Mr. Goacher recorded in Nashville with choir and orchestra on five different woodwind instruments. Mr. Goacher recorded a CD of the music of George Gershwin as an adjunct member of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and also performed in Carnegie Hall with the CSO.  He was alto saxophonist with the Eugene Rousseau Saxophone Quartet which recorded an LP of chamber music in New York City for Crest Records.

Mr. Goacher has performed professionally in the orchestras of The Temptations, Henry Mancini, Julie Andrews, Lena Horne, Bob Hope, Andy Williams, Rosemary Clooney, Johnny Mathis, and the touring Broadway orchestras for many, many musicals.  In 2012, Mr. Goacher performed at the Monteux (Switzerland) Jazz Festival, Jazz a’ Vienne (France) Festival, America Appreciation Day Concert at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, and at the Regen Jazz Club in Vienna, Austria.