Gladys Stone Wright

Gladys Stone Wright (March 8, 1925 – October 29, 2025) was an American band director. She was among the first female band directors in the United States. Wright was also a composer, author, music judge, and clinician who won multiple awards for her work.

Background Wright was born on March 8, 1925, in Wasco, Oregon. Her childhood was spent in the heart of Oregon's wheat country. She started to learn music when she received a year's worth of free piano lessons along with a $5 clarinet.

Gladys Stone Wright and Al G. Wright lived in West Lafayette, Indiana. She died on October 29, 2025, at the age of 100.

Career Wright was a high school band director at a time when that was considered an unusual job for a woman, and many school administrators were against hiring a woman for the position. She was the second woman to become a member of the American School Band Directors Association, which included 450 men. In Oregon, Wright conducted the band at Elmira Union High School for five years. During her final year at Elmira Union, the high school's band went to the Northwest Music Educators Conference. Wright said of the conference, "It was the only time they had had a woman director, and the clinic session was packed by male directors just to see what a woman could do." The male band directors applauded the performance.

In 2024 and 2025, the University of Maryland Libraries' Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library hosted the exhibit, "Gladys Stone Wright: Promoting Women on the Band Podium," to celebrate the arrival of her personal papers at UMD's Special Collections in Performing Arts (SCPA).

Awards In 1969, Wright received a citation of excellence from the National Band Association. Wright won the Tau Beta Sigma "National Award for Service to Music" at the University of Michigan in 1971. The award "recognizes the contributions made by distinguished female conductors, composers, educators, administrators, artists, and clinicians" who have helped promote bands as a "musical art form".