Hoover received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from UofL. Before retiring to Florida in 2004, he was an active musician in the Louisville community. He taught instrumental music at Atherton, Seneca and Ballard high schools and also at several middle and elementary schools in the Louisville and Jefferson County school systems.
Hoover also served as UofL’s director of bands and for several years and played French horn in the Louisville Orchestra. He was bandmaster of the National Guard’s 202nd Army Band and conductor of the River Cities Concert Band.
The award’s namesake, Robert B. Griffith, was a UofL professor and division head in music education from 1961 to 1978. Before that he had been band and orchestra director at Manual High School in Louisville from 1945 to 1961.
Griffith composed the official school song, “Fight UofL,” and had more than 75 published marches, including “The Courier Journal March,” which he wrote in 1972. The arrangement of “My Old Kentucky Home” that the UofL Marching Band plays each year at the Kentucky Derby also is his.
The Wind Ensemble concert will feature Hoover as guest conductor for “The Courier Journal March.” The program also will include: “Quodling’s Delight,” by Kenneth Hesketh; “Swing Low,” by Steve Rouse; the world premiere of “Torn Canvases,” by Matthew Tommasini; Symphony No. 3, by Vittorio Giannini; and the “Finale from the Pineapple Poll,” by Arthur Sullivan.