Dr. Scott Cowen is an Assistant Professor of Music at Western Michigan University, where he directs the University Jazz Orchestra, coaches chamber ensembles, and teaches jazz theory, applied jazz brass and jazz appreciation.

He previously held faculty positions at the New England Conservatory of Music, Berklee College of Music, Longly School of Music, and Florida International University. Dr. Cowan's performing experience includes appearances on trumpet with the University of Miami's Jazz Faculty Septet, the Ron Miller Ensemble, the Artie Shaw Orchestra, and the Palm Beach Pops Orchestra.

He has been featured as a guest soloist with the New England Conservatory Brass Ensemble and as a guest artist at the Glen Miller Festival. His jazz compositions have received premieres at the International Association for Jazz Education conference and the Boston Globe Jazz Festival. Extensive recordings of his compositions for large and small groups have been made with premiere performing ensembles at the University of Miami.

Keith Hall is the jazz drumset instructor at Western Michigan University.  He received his Bachelor of Music in Jazz Studies from WMU and a Master of Arts in Jazz Studies from Queens College in New York. 

Keith tours with singer Curtis Stigers performing extensively throughout the U.S., Europe and Japan.  According to JazzPolice.com “He has the chops and fuel to hit the afterburner zone”, and Modern Drummer Magazine says  “Hall has  a nimble, grooving, and 'melodic' touch.”  Keith was recently part of a U.S. State Department with the latin-jazz group Grupo Yanqui.  His critically acclaimed CDs include ‘Skyline’ and ‘Invisible Horizon’ with Bennett Paster and Greg Ryan and ‘Tri-Fi’ with Matthew Fries and Phil Palombi.

During his years in New York, Keith was a regular sub on Broadway's ‘Lion King’, an adjunct faculty member at New York University and performed with the likes of Marcus Belgrave, Betty Carter, Sir Roland Hanna, Wynton Marsalis, Michael Phillip Mossman, Steve Wilson, Joe Wilder, Claudio Roditi, and Terrell Stafford.   

Keith presents clinics and master classes around the world and is an artist for Regal Tip drumsticks, Taye drums, Istanbul Agop cymbals, and Attack drumheads.  Keith also directs the band at Christian Life Center. 

 

 

Billy Hart is a world renowned jazz drummer and a visiting artist in the School of Music at Western Michigan University. His affiliation with WMU began in 1992 when he was Artist-in-Residence under the aegis of the Martin Luther King-Cesar Chavez-Rosa Parks Visiting Professor Program. During this time he has taught classes, drumset, and coaches student ensembles. He also performs with the Western Jazz Quartet on tour and on record and is featured on three of the group's CD's: Firebird, Blue Harts, and Sabine's Dance. He also appears on a number other WMU Jazz Faculty recordings.

With more than 40 years experience in jazz performance and teaching, Hart has long been one of the most "in-demand" jazz drummers. Making more than 500 recordings, Hart has performed with virtually every major artist including: Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Herbie Hancock, Quest, Charles Lloyd, Eddie Harris, Joe Lovano, Tom Harrell, Jimmy Smith, Buster Williams, Joao Gilberto, Benny Golson, Wes Montgomery, McCoy Tyner, Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, Pharoah Sanders, Marian McPartland, Jimmie Rowles, JoAnne Brackeen, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Doug Raney, Lee Konitz, Clark Terry, Duke Jordan, Chico Freeman, Johnny Coles, James Newton , Jimmy Knepper, Peter Leitch, Paul Bley, The Mingus Dynasty, Dave Liebman and Richard Beirach, John Patitucci, Ray Brown, John Abercrombie, Larry Carlton, Larry Coryell, Tal Farlow, and John Scofield, Ralph Moore, Gary Bartz, Judy Niemack, Marc Copland, Gust William Tsilis, Jane Bunnett, Warren Vaché, Sonny Fortune, Stanley Cowell, Denise Jannah, Ivo Perelman, Kevin Hays, Ray Drummond, Eddie Henderson, Jerry Bergonzi, Uli Beckerhoff, George Cables, Ron McClure, Andy LaVerne, Don Byron, and Chris Potter. He also led a band which held annual engagements at Sweet Basil, New York, through the 1990s. Hart is widely regarded as one of the most capable of modern-jazz drummers; he is equally at home in electronic and rock-influenced styles, in free jazz, and in bop. He is the author of book Jazz Drumming. (Rottenburg, Germany, 1988, and New Albany, IN, 1989)

Billy Hart's own records include:

Enchance (1977, A&M Horizon) with Dewey Redman, Marvin “Hannibal” Peterson, Eddie Henderson, Oliver Lake, Don Pullen, Buster Williams, and Dave Holland

Such Great Friends (1983, Strata East) with Billy Harper, Stanley Cowell, and Reggie Workman.

Oshumare (1985, Gramavision) with Steve Coleman, Branford Marsalis, Didier Lockwood, Kenny Kirkland, Bill Frisell, Kevin Eubanks, Mark Grey, and Dave Holland

Great Friends (1986, Evidence) with Sonny Fortune, Billy Harper, Stanley Cowell, and Reggie Workman

Rah (1987, Gramavision) with Dave Liebman, Kenny Kirkland, Eddie Henderson, Ralph Moore, Kevin Eubanks, Bill Frisell, Mark Grey, Eddie Gomez, Buster Williams, and Caris Visentin

Amethyst (1993, Arabesque) with John Stubblefield, Mark Feldman, David Fiuczynski, David Kikoski, Marc Copland, and Santi Debriano

Oceans of Time (1996, Arabesque) with John Stubblefield, Chris Potter, Mark Feldman, David Fiuczynski, David Kikoski, and Santi Debriano

Quartet ( 2006, High Note) with Ethan Iverson, Mark Turner, Ben Street

In addition to his distinguished career as a performer, Hart has an extensive knowledge of Non-Western music. He appears as a clinician for Pearl drums and Zildjian cymbals.

 

Fred Hersch (Visiting Faculty Artist)  www.fredhersch.com

Pianist and composer Fred Hersch has earned a place among the foremost jazz artists in the world today. He is widely recognized for his ability to reinvent the standard jazz repertoire - investing time-tested classics with keen insight, fresh ideas and extraordinary technique - while steadfastly creating his own unique body of works. Described by The New Yorker as "a poet of a pianist" and The New York Times as "a master who plays it his way," Hersch's many accomplishments include a 2003 Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for composition, a Rockefeller Fellowship for a composition residency at the Bellagio Center in Italy and two Grammy® nominations for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance. He has recorded more than two dozen albums as a solo artist or bandleader, co-led another twenty sessions and appeared as a sideman or featured soloist on some eighty further recordings.

As a solo pianist, Hersch may well have more unaccompanied recordings to his credit than any other jazz pianist of his generation. February of 2006 saw the release of Fred Hersch in Amsterdam: Live at the Bimhuis (Palmetto Records), a solo CD that features an eclectic program of Hersch at his pianistic peak. Its release has led to Hersch becoming the first pianist in the 70-year history of the Village vanguard to play an entire week solo. The New York Times' Ben Ratliff acknowledges that, "Hersch has honed a solo piano concept second to none in jazz." Ed Hazell, writing in Jazziz, stated that “few jazz pianists have ever struck as beguiling a balance between technique, feeling, insight and imagination...Hersch’s engagement with each of these songs is so complete that he evokes the sort of secret meanings words cannot.” And the Los Angeles Times said: "There isn't a false note--technically or emotionally...a tribute to Hersch's unerring ability to play music that is as intelligent as it is touching, as virtuosic as it is swinging." Six previous solo piano recordings include Let Yourself Go, an eclectic recital recorded live at Boston's famed Jordan Hall, and Thelonious: Fred Hersch Plays Monk, which the Washington Post declared "a landmark album." And The New York Times says, “Mr. Hersch has honed a solo piano concept second to none in jazz.”

Other recent CD releases include Fred's composition "Leaves of Grass" (Palmetto Records, 2005) featuring vocalists Kurt Elling and Kate McGarry and an instrumental octet; and a disc with soprano Renée Fleming (Decca Records,  2005) The Fred Hersch Trio + 2 (Palmetto, 2004), featuring trumpeter Ralph Alessi and tenor release,saxophonist Tony Malaby in addition to Hersch's current trio members bassist Drew Gress and drummer Nasheet Waits, Live at the Village Vanguard (Palmetto, 2003).

Hersch has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning with Dr. Billy Taylor and National Public Radio programs such as Morning Edition, Fresh Air, Studio 360, Prairie Home Companion, Jazz From Lincoln Center, Jazz Set, and Marian McPartland's popular Piano Jazz. In addition to his Guggenheim Fellowship, Hersch has been awarded grants from The National Endowment for the Arts and Meet the Composer, as well as four composition residencies at the prestigious MacDowell Colony. He is a four-time winner of a Gay and Lesbian American Music Award  (GLAMA). A respected educator, Hersch was a faculty member at the New England Conservatory for ten years, and has taught at The New School and Manhattan School of Music. He is currently a visiting professor at Western Michigan University.

 

Tom Knific has performed with many of the great jazz artists of our time on tour and on record. They include Gene Bertoncini, Billy Hart, Randy Brecker, Dave Brubeck, Fred Hersch, and others. He and Eric Marienthal co-led the “Dream Band” with Toots Thielemans, Kenny Werner and Harvey Mason in the first live interactive jazz concert multi-cast over the Internet. As a classical artist, he has recorded with Pepe Romero, Andre Watts, Philippe Entremont, and the Merling Trio, and has been principal bassist with orchestras and chamber orchestras in the U.S. and Europe. He has appeared at chamber music festivals throughout North America and Europe and is a founding member and composer for the contemporary music group, OPUS 21. Tom is professor of double bass and director of jazz studies at Western Michigan University. He has also taught at the Interlochen Arts Academy, Michigan State University, Cleveland Institute of Music, and has presented over a hundred master classes worldwide.  

As a composer, Tom has written over a dozen works in a variety of idioms. He has been commissioned by OPUS 21, and leading instrumentalists. He has received numerous grants and awards for his writing and his music may be heard on six CD’s.  In contemporary music, Tom has worked with John Cage, Donald Erb, Mario Davidovsky, Eve Beglarian, Daniel Bernard Roumain, Curtis Curtis-Smith, Richard Adams, Chen Yi, Tania Leon, and others.

A renown educator, Tom’s students have toured and recorded with Betty Carter, Vincent Herring, Cedar Walton, John Scofield, and perform in orchestras on three continents. In addition, he received the Down Beat magazine Achievement in Jazz Education award in 2004. The Jazz Studies program at Western Michigan University has produced more Down Beat magazine Student Music Award winners than any other school for most of the last decade. Tom is leader of the Western Jazz Quartet. The WJQ has appeared on four continents and has received rave reviews for their five CD’s of original music. In 1998, Jazzheads Records released “Home Bass”, Knific’s first solo CD, which was featured as CD of the week on the internet magazine The Jazz Review. Knific released a second solo CD, Siena, in 2004 on Sea Breeze Records.  He has also recorded on the Universal, Mercury, Koch International, SMR, Centaur, Jazzheads and Polonia labels. Tom is president of the International Society of Bassists and hosted the 2005 world convention in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

 

Trent Kynaston is a recognized artist in classical and jazz music and has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Central America, South America, and Asia. A professor of music at Western Michigan University, he teaches saxophone, jazz studies, and performs as a member of the Western Jazz Quartet, a resident faculty ensemble in the School of Music. He holds degrees from the University of Arizona in Tucson and the coveted gold Medaille d’Honeur in saxophone and chamber music from the Conservatoire National de Musique de Bordeaux, France. Kynaston is the recipient of Down Beat magazine's annual Achievement Award for Jazz Education, and received the Outstanding Service Award and the Dean’s Outstanding Teaching Award from the WMU College of Fine Arts. 

Professor Kynaston has published numerous compositions, books, and articles on various aspects of music, and is recognized world-wide for his jazz solo transcription books. He has performed and toured with numerous internationally recognized jazz artists, including Art Farmer, Red Rodney, Urbie Green, Billy Hart, Mark Murphy, Stefon Harris, Kenny Werner, and Randy Brecker. His recordings include Live at the Akwarium Jazz Club (Warsaw, Poland) on Koch Jazz International, Firebird on SMR (listed in the January 2000 issue of Down Beat Magazine as one of the best CD's of the 90's), Blue Harts on SMR, Turtles (with Randy Brecker) on Polonia, The Waning Moon on Mercury, Sabine's Dance on Sea Breeze Jazz, and Mayan Myths on Sea Breeze Jazz.

Robert Ricci is a professor of music at WMU, where he teaches music composition and theory. As a composer, Dr. Ricci has written for a wide variety of media. His compositions have received several awards and among his commissions is one by the Rockefeller Foundation.

He is a frequent contributor to the Keyboard Classics and Piano Stylist magazine with articles pertaining to jazz harmony and composition. He also leads "Pieces of Dreams," a jazz and commercial music group in demand in Michigan and surrounding states.

Diana Spradling teaches graduate and undergraduate Private Voice and Vocal Pedagogy.  She is also the Director of the Applied Studio Technology Laboratory (ASTL), a state-of-the-art lab that acoustically analyzes sound and measures vocal behaviors such as vowel clarity, vibrato rate and width, presence and absence of legato, onsets, releases, resonance, nasality and  laryngeal freedom to name a few.

Students who have studied with her during the last decade include several university appointed jazz voice professors, 6 Downbeat Award winners, on and Off Broadway performers, members of national touring companies, recording artists, club singers, studio musicians, jingle singers, cabaret performers and a Grammy nominee. 

Spradling is co-founder of the International Association of Jazz Education’s Sisters in Jazz program, a mentoring program to encourage and promote participation of young women between the ages of 15 and 25 in the Art of jazz music. She also served as the National Chair for Jazz and Show Choirs for ACDA for three consecutive two-year terms.  Her jazz vocal ensembles have appeared in performances at MENC, ACDA and IAJE and have shared the stage with many of America’s leading jazz educators and performing artists.

In addition to appearing regularly as an adjudicator at festivals, as a staff member at music camps throughout North America and as the Executive Director and voice coach at the Steve Zegree Vocal Jazz Camp, Spradling has just completed the writing of a book on jazz vocal pedagogy based on three years of acoustic research of the first generation of modern jazz artists from Frank Sinatra to Bobby McFerrin.

 

Michael Wheaton

Gold Company II

Michael Wheaton, Director of GC II, is also a music teacher in the Waverly Community Schools in Lansing, Michigan and is on the music staff at First United Methodist Church of Eaton Rapids. Michael served as the State Chair of Vocal Jazz and Show Choirs for the Missouri American Choral Directors Association and has been an active clinician and adjudicator in Missouri, Kansas, and Michigan. He has taught music for grades K-12, and his high school jazz ensemble performed at the Missouri State Choir Convention. 

Michael  is married to fellow Gold Company, GC II, and University Chorale alumna, Brenda Austin Wheaton, and they have three children: Hannah, Blaine, and Mia.

Dr. Stephen Zegree is one of the most respected vocal jazz educators in the world. As Bobby McFerrin Professor of Jazz in the School of Music at Western Michigan University, Dr. Zegree teaches classical and jazz piano and directs Gold Company, Western Michigan University’s internationally regarded vocal jazz ensemble. In addition, he performs as pianist in the Western Jazz Quartet, WMU’s resident faculty jazz ensemble. Dr. Zegree’s choral arrangements are published by Hal Leonard Music Publications, Shawnee Press, and Warner Brothers Publications. He is the author of “The Complete Guide To Teaching Vocal Jazz”, published by Heritage Music Press and he co-produced jazz vocalist Mark Murphy's " Nat King Cole Songbook" which was nominated for a Grammy Award.

Dr. Zegree is in demand as a pianist, clinician, adjudicator and conductor around the world. A renowned educator, his students are among today’s leaders in jazz and pop performance, Broadway, recording studio production, writing, arranging, singing, and music education.