David Warren Brubeck was an American jazz pianist and composer. Often regarded as a foremost exponent of cool jazz, Brubeck's work is characterized by unusual time signatures and superimposing contrasting rhythms, meters, tonalities, and combining different styles and genres, like classic, jazz, and blues.
Bennett Lester Carter was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. With Johnny Hodges, he was a pioneer on the alto saxophone. From the beginning of his career in the 1920s, he worked as an arranger including written charts for Fletcher Henderson's big band that shaped the swing style. He had an unusually long career that lasted into the 1990s. During the 1980s and 1990s, he was nominated for eight Grammy Awards, which included receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award.
California State University, East Bay is a public university in Hayward, California. The university is part of the California State University system and offers 136 undergraduate and 60 post-baccalaureate areas of study. Founded in 1957, California State University, East Bay has a student body of almost 14,000. As of Fall 2021, it had 863 faculty, of whom 358 (41%) were on the tenure track. The university's largest and oldest college campus is located in Hayward, with additional centers in the nearby cities of Oakland and Concord.
The University of California Marching Band, usually shortened to Cal Band, is the marching band for the University of California, Berkeley. While it is administered under the auspices of the university, the Cal Band is almost completely student-run and represents Cal at sporting events and other social gatherings. The name of the band is officially "The University of California Band" according to the constitution, but is typically called "The University of California Marching Band" or "The Cal Band". When the band marches out of Memorial Stadium's North Tunnel for football pre-games, it is referred to as "The Pacesetter of College Marching Bands, the Pride of California".
David Liebman is an American saxophonist, flautist and jazz educator. He is known for his innovative lines and use of atonality. He was a frequent collaborator with pianist Richie Beirach.
Independence High School, also referred to as IHS, is a public high school located in the Berryessa district of San Jose, California, United States. The school is operated by the East Side Union High School District (ESUHSD). Its namesake is the United States Declaration of Independence, which celebrated its bicentennial in the same year Independence High was established in 1976.
George Whitty is an American musician, composer, record producer, audio engineer and music educator, currently living near Los Angeles, California, United States. He won an Emmy Award in 2014 for his work as a composer for the television series, All My Children, and produced three Grammy Award winning CDs. Whitty was nominated for Emmy Awards for his composing on the long-running TV shows One Life to Live and As the World Turns.
Shelton "Shelly" Glen Berg is an American classical and jazz pianist and music educator. He is the dean of the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida and the school's Patricia L. Frost Professor of Music.
Branham High School is a secondary school in San Jose, California, located in the Cambrian neighborhood within the West San Jose region. It originally opened on September 13, 1967, under the Campbell Union High School District (CUHSD) before closing in 1991. The District leased the campus to Valley Christian Schools in 1991. The school was reopened by CUHSD in 1999 due to increased enrollment within the district. It is named after Isaac Branham, a Californian pioneer who became a successful farmer and lumber mill owner.
Gerald Stanley Wilson was an American jazz trumpeter, big band bandleader, composer, arranger, and educator. Born in Mississippi, he was based in Los Angeles from the early 1940s. He arranged music for Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, Julie London, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Carter, Lionel Hampton, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, and Nancy Wilson.
Bruce Forman is an American jazz guitarist.
Clarence Acox is an American band director and jazz drummer. He is a native of New Orleans, and has been heard in a variety of settings in the Pacific Northwest.
The Jazz Mafia is a young American musical collective led by Adam Theis and performs music rooted in jazz but touching on other genres and featuring a variety of sub-groupings with various collaborators.
The National Association for Music Education (NAfME) is an organization of American music educators dedicated to advancing and preserving music education as part of the core curriculum of schools in the United States. Founded in 1907 as the Music Supervisors National Conference (MSNC), the organization was known from 1934 to 1998 as the Music Educators National Conference. From 1998 to 2011 it was known as "MENC: The National Association for Music Education." On September 1, 2011, the organization changed its acronym from MENC to NAfME. On March 8, 2012, the organization's name legally became National Association for Music Education, using the acronym "NAfME". It has approximately 45,000 members, and NAfME's headquarters are located in Herndon, Virginia
The University of California Jazz Ensembles, also known as the UC Jazz Ensembles, UC Jazz, or UCJE, is the student jazz organization founded in 1967 on the University of California, Berkeley, campus. Founded in 1967, it comprises one or more big bands, numerous jazz combos, a vocal jazz ensemble, an alumni big band, and instructional classes. With a mission statement to foster a community for the performance, study, and promotion of jazz at U.C. Berkeley, its Wednesday Night big band provides free concerts every Thursday noon on Lower Sproul Plaza, its various units perform throughout the San Francisco Bay Area including area high schools, travel to collegiate jazz festivals, and perform overseas, and for many years it sponsored the annual Pacific Coast Jazz Festival. It also provides master classes by its instructors and clinics by prominent guest artists. It has nurtured numerous musicians who have become professional jazz musicians and educators. UC Jazz Ensembles is one of three groups, with the Cal (marching) Band and UC Choral Ensembles, forming Student Musical Activities (SMA), a department within Cal Performances on the U.C. Berkeley campus. Its members are primarily U.C. Berkeley undergraduate and graduate students, representing many academic disciplines.
David W. Tucker (1929–2003) was an American jazz trombonist, music educator, composer of band and orchestral music, record producer, and marching band arranger, most renowned as the director of the University of California Jazz Ensembles from 1969 until 1985. Under his direction, the organization expanded to become the largest musical organization on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, had an international reputation resulting from foreign tours, and sponsored the Pacific Coast Collegiate Jazz Festival. Numerous student members of the organization have become renowned jazz musicians, composers, and music educators.
Bennett Friedman is an American jazz tenor saxophonist. He attended Berkeley High School, Boston's Berklee College of Music, and San Francisco State University, where he was awarded a Master's Degree in Music (performance).
Jack Cooper is an American composer, arranger, orchestrator, multireedist, and music educator. He has performed with, written music for and recorded by internationally known pop, jazz, and classical artists.
Steve Wiest(néJohn Stephen Wiest; born 1957) is an American trombonist, composer, arranger, big band director, music educator at the collegiate level, jazz clinician, author, and illustrator/cartoonist. From 1981 to 1985, he was a featured trombonist and arranger with the Maynard Ferguson Band. Wiest is in his eleventh year as Associate Professor of Jazz Studies and Commercial Music at the University of Denver Lamont School of Music. He is the Coordinator of the 21st Century Music Initiative at the school. Wiest has been a professor for thirty-six of the forty-four years that he has been a professional trombonist, composer, and arranger. From 2007 to 2014, Wiest was Associate Professor of Music in Jazz Studies at the University of North Texas College of Music and, from March 2009 to August 2014, he was director of the One O'Clock Lab Band and coordinator of the Lab Band program. At North Texas, Wiest also taught conducting, trombone, and oversaw The U-Tubes — the College of Music's jazz trombone band. Wiest is a three-time Grammy nominee — individually in 2008 for Best instrumental Arrangement and in 2010 for Best Instrumental Composition, and collaboratively in 2010 for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album, which he directed. As of 2013, Wiest has in excess of 58 arrangements and compositions to his credit, which include 10 original compositions from his current project (see 2013–2014 project below).
Thomas Darwin Eshelman is an American former professional baseball pitcher and current pitching coach in the San Diego Padres organization. He made his Major League Baseball (MLB) debut with the Baltimore Orioles in 2019. He played college baseball for the Titans of California State University, Fullerton. The Houston Astros selected Eshelman in the 2015 MLB draft, and traded him to the Philadelphia Phillies after the 2015 season. He was traded to the Baltimore Orioles during the 2019 season.
