Ron Wilcott, composer with Grand Mesa Strings.

Ron Wilcott

Hello, I’m Ron Wilcott. I love arranging music for string orchestra and teachers and players seem to enjoy my arrangements. 

I’ve been playing cello since 1998 but I was about 50 years old then. Why did I wait so long? Because that’s when the youngest of my two sons started playing violin. My older boy had started about two years earlier. If both of my sons were going to play strings, I was too. 

I am now retired after four decades in the music classroom teaching orchestra, band and choir. My educational background includes Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees from the University of Southern California, and a Doctorate from Michigan State University. My primary positions have been at East Bakersfield High School (Bakersfield, CA), Dixie College (now Dixie State University—St. George, UT), University of South Carolina Aiken (Aiken, SC), and, in  Missoula, MT(the place I now call home) at Sentinel High School and Loyola Sacred Heart Catholic High School.

I still enjoy my opportunities to play cello in recreational settings—chamber music with family members and string orchestra repertoire with my friends in the Garden City Strings.

Grand Mesa has published six of my arrangements. My latest one, “All-Night Vigil,” was played in 2018 at the prestigious Midwinter Band and Orchestra Clinic in Chicago by Round Rock High School Orchestra of Round Rock Texas directed by Sandra Vandertulip.

I hope you’ll enjoy one of my pieces too.