Wartburg College will host 190 high school musicians at the 43rd annual Meistersinger Honor Band Festival Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 2-3.

Students from 50 schools in Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota will attend the festival, which concludes with a concert Sunday afternoon in Neumann Auditorium.

The Wartburg College Concert Bands will perform at 2 p.m., followed by two honor bands at 3 p.m. The concert is open to the public and free of charge.

 “It’s a fantastic opportunity for the high school students to come together with others from all over to make great music and to get an up-close view of Wartburg,” said Dr. Craig A. Hancock, Wartburg College professor and director of bands. “Our college band students always have fun hosting the event.”

The high school bands will spend the weekend rehearsing for the concert with two nationally known conductors. Donna Angell of Iowa City, a longtime Iowa high school band director, will direct the ninth grade band, while Mark Camphouse, professor and associate director of the George Mason University School of Music in Fairfax, Va., will lead the grades 10-12 band.

Angell graduated from the University of Iowa and taught every stage of instrumental music education from junior high to post-high school, retiring after 21 years of directing the Northwood-Kensett High School band program.

Camphouse, a Chicago native, earned his bachelor and master’s degrees from Northwestern University. He began playing with the Colorado Philharmonic at 17 and is also well known as a composer for wind bands. His 25 published works include “A Movement for Rosa,” honoring civil rights icon Rosa Parks and featured on National Public Radio.

As director of bands at Radford University in Virginia, Camphouse won the 1991 National Band Composition Competition and the 2002 Outstanding Faculty Award for Virginia’s colleges and universities.