LESLIE GILREATH is a native of Anderson South Carolina and a 1990 graduate of Furman University, where he studied conducting and orchestration with Jay Bocook. He also studied composition and orchestration with Michael Hennagin and Carolyn Bremer at the University of Oklahoma. Having grown up with a love of music deeply rooted in his high school band and church experiences, he spent his childhood and young adulthood immersed in playing the piano and saxophone and conducting both his high school and college marching bands.

He is in his twenty-fourth year in education and his eighteenth year as the Director of Bands at Summerville High School in Summerville, South Carolina where The Summerville Ensembles receive consistent superior ratings and have been featured at SCMEA and MENC Southern Division Conferences. He has been the recipient of Citations of Excellence and Citations of Merit for Marching Excellence from the National Band Association and is in demand as a composer and arranger. Mr. Gilreath is a National Board Certified Teacher, the 2011 Summerville High School Teacher of the Year and a Dorchester District Honor Teacher of the Year. He was named the Phi Beta Mu Theta Chapter 2019 Outstanding Bandmaster and a 2019 Laureate of the John Philip Sousa Foundation's "Legion of Honor."