Rick Hammarstrom

Art

Rick Hammarstrom devotes a great deal of his life to performance art, much to the benefit of the Manteca/Lathrop community. A San Francisco native, Hammarstrom and his 6 younger siblings were raised in Hayward by their parents Richard and Sarah. He graduated from Hayward High School in 1978. Before graduating from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Music and a teaching credential in 1984, Rick spent two years in Tokyo, Japan on a proselyting mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Rick went on to obtain his Master of Music Education from California State University of Sacramento in 1990. Rick began his career in 1985 as a music educator, started with Manteca Unified School District in 1989 and has been the Band Director at Sierra High School since 1998. Rick has a passion for music and regularly brings in guest artists and clinicians to perform and work with his students. Peter Jaffe of the Stockton Symphony, the Fresno State “Bulldog Beat” band and the East Bay Faculty Jazz combo are just few of the musicians that have made appearances. Rick proudly takes the Sierra High band to perform at music festivals all over the world. The bands have performed throughout California, at Disneyland, and in Oregon, Hawaii, and Japan. Rick takes great pleasure in the fact that many of his former students have gone on to become music teachers themselves and some even earn a living as performers. Aside from being an accomplished teacher, Rick is a talented musician as well. He won the Billboard Songwriting contest in 1990 and his compositions and arrangements have been performed many times by various musicians.