Music lovers across Longmont are mourning the loss of director, teacher and performer Bill Wilkinson.

Wilkinson, who spent decades teaching music in Longmont-area schools, died Dec. 9. He was 75.

According to a post on Wilkinson’s Facebook profile, he died “suddenly” while doing what he loved most: “preparing for a day of teaching music.”

Wilkinson, who was born in Illinois, started playing the trumpet at 10 years old. His skill with the instrument brought him many performance opportunities, including playing Taps for the Bolder Boulder 10K and police events.

In Longmont, Wilkinson was a key member of the music scene. He served as band director at Skyline High School and started the Skyline Jazz Festival in 1979. He also taught music at Longmont High School, Silver Creek High School, Longmont Christian School and Rocky Mountain Christian Academy in Niwot.

Doug Carmichael met Wilkinson while Carmichael was a student at Erie High School. Wilkinson was the band director at Skyline, but got to know Carmichael when Erie High and Skyline jazz students attended a music education conference together in Colorado Springs.

As two jazz musicians, Carmichael and Wilkinson formed a lasting bond. While serving as band director at Niwot High School, Carmichael was asked to help Wilkinson run the Longmont All Star Jazz Band. The two also hosted summer band camps for students, including some last year.

“We were technically colleagues, although he’ll always be a mentor to me,” Carmichael said. “I always aspire to be like Bill.”

Wilkinson even inspired Carmichael to teach music himself.

“Even up until a month ago, I was learning from him,” Carmichael said. “I’d watch him in rehearsals and go, ‘Yep, that’s right.’ He’ll have an impact on me for the rest of my life.”

The Longmont All Star Jazz Band, which Wilkinson founded in 2001, consists of top musicians from local high schools. The students in the band have recorded music and played at events around the country, all under Wilkinson’s direction.

“Bill took it upon himself to start that and to kind of cultivate the local players around town,” said Willy Counts, worship pastor at Longmont’s New Creation Church. “They’re really a great team, and that’s an ode to Bill.”

Wilkinson’s impact on music in Longmont goes beyond youth. Counts knew Wilkinson from his time in the worship band at New Creation Church. Wilkinson played trumpet in the band, infusing the ensemble of mostly string instruments with some brass. The band opens church services with music, playing a few songs each weekend.

“It was an interesting thing that Bill brought to the table, being a horn player,” Counts said. “He would always find ways to craft in these really nice horn parts to more contemporary worship music.”

Counts, who joined New Creation Church in 2020, worked closely with Wilkinson in the church’s music ministry. Wilkinson directed an orchestra made up of New Creation Church members, and arranged horn parts for the church’s music. Arranging can be a tall task, Counts explained, but Wilkinson took it in stride.

“There was never once a time where that man complained at me,” Counts said. “He was always just very supportive.”

Wilkinson’s family set up the Wilkinson Band Fund at Summit Classical Academy in Broomfield to honor his contributions to music at the school. Wilkinson started a band program at Summit Classical in the fall, just a few months before his death. The advanced band had fewer than 10 students at the beginning of the semester. Wilkinson, however, got them ready to perform by November.

“He brought things out of them that I had not seen,” said Teresa Fraser, head of school at Summit Classical Academy.

Fraser said the students at Summit Classical had been asking for a band program prior to Wilkinson’s arrival. When one student, a cello player, wanted to join the band, Wilkinson arranged the music to include a cello part.

The Wilkinson Band Fund will help continue the program at Summit Classical as the school searches for a new band teacher. Wilkinson’s family members are also donating his instruments and music to Summit Classical.

Fraser said she’d assumed other schools were benefiting from the Wilkinson Band Fund, too. To learn that Summit Classical was the sole recipient, she said, was overwhelming.

“He gave us, in his life, so much to start a band program that was excellent and blew people away,” Fraser said of Wilkinson. “After his death, this legacy is still going on. So much of him is going to just be ever-present in our school.”