Previous Winners

Lewis Van Haney graduated from the Eastman School of Music in 1942. He performed with the United States Army Band and was a member of the renowned New York Philharmonic trombone section of the 1940s and 1950s. In 1963, he began a twenty-five year career at the Indiana University School of Music where he influenced a countless number of students, many of whom became famous trombone performers and educators. Van Haney's activities also included editing the trombone parts for Beethoven, Brahms and other composers; serving as a clinician for several musical instrument companies; and contributing to the design of several standard trombone models.

Lewis Van Haney was honored several times by the ITA including his receipt of the second ITA Award in 1973. Shortly after his death in 1991, Tom Ervin, past president and member of the Board, proposed that a scholarship in Van Haney's name be created. Minutes of the June 13, 1991 ITA Board meeting state that the motion by Ervin to establish a perpetual scholarship honoring the late Van Haney passed unanimously. At the conception of an ITA sponsored Van Haney Prize, it benefited from a lengthy planning and fundraising effort. The Board decided that approximately two thousand five hundred dollars should be collected and a request for contributions should be made in the next issue of the ITA Journal. By October of that year, almost all of the necessary money had been collected and plans were under way to announce the scholarship. By May of 1992, funds for the project had been successfully raised.

Van Haney's widow, Sylvia Van Haney, suggested that the award go to a winner based on an audition tape of orchestral excerpts. The sub-committee created to handle the Van Haney Scholarship decided that, after a first round of audition tapes, contestants would be selected to perform in a mock orchestral audition at the Workshop. The now titled Lewis Van Haney Philharmonic Prize was placed under the jurisdiction of the Scholarship and Awards Committee and first awarded to Jon Etterbeek in 1993 at the Workshop in Cleveland, Ohio. It differed from other scholarships offered by the ITA because winners were selected at the Workshop by competing in a mock orchestral audition. The contest alternated yearly between tenor and bass trombone players. The award was unique in that winners, first through fourth place, were given material prizes in the form of instruments, recordings, cash awards, etc. Several major instrument companies eagerly sponsored the event.

The Van Haney Prize also differed in the way the scholarship was managed. In 1993, at the onset of the project, Board minutes indicated that "The Lewis Van Haney Orchestral Prize will be placed under the jurisdiction of the ITA Scholarship Committee, the current committee will function as a subcommittee of the Scholarship Committee, and the Chair of the Lewis Van Haney Orchestral Prize Steering Committee will become a member of the Scholarship Committee." The guidelines, determined independently, were then brought to the Board for approval and the competition was added to the Scholarship and Awards Committee. By 1994, M. Dee Stewart, trombone professor at Indiana University, oversaw the administration of the Van Haney Prize as well as the format under which contestants and winners were chosen.