EASTMAN JAZZ ENSEMBLE

The EastmanJazz Ensemble has been recognized as one of the world's premier collegiate jazz performing organizations for three decades. Years before Eastman alumnus Chuck Mangione became the ensemble's first faculty director, the band was established and governed by Eastman student musicians. In 1970, former Radio City Music Hall musical director Rayburn Wright was hired to develop the Eastman jazz studies and contemporary media program and in 1972 he succeeded Mangione as director of the Jazz Ensemble. Bill Dobbins, who led the group from 1989 to 1994, returned to the position in 2002 after an eight-year tenure as principal director of the WDR Radio Big Band in Cologne, Germany. Fred Sturm served as director from 1995 to 2002. The Eastman Jazz Ensemble has frequently received the award for "Best Big Band" in the Annual Down Beat Magazine Student Music Awards, most recently in 2000. It has frequently been featured at the Annual Conference of the International Association of Jazz Educators, most recently in New York City in 2001. The group has performed at the International Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland and in renowned concert halls throughout the world. Guest performers and conductors with the group have included such highly acclaimed jazz artists as Bill Holman, Clare Fischer, Bob Brookmeyer, Benny Carter, Benny Golson, Joe Henderson, Dave Holland, Joe Lovano, Bobby McFerrin, Maria Schneider, Toots Thielemans, Kenny Wheeler, and Phil Woods.

BILL DOBBINS

Bill Dobbins (b. 1947) is currently professor of jazz studies and contemporary media at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where he teaches courses in jazz composing and arranging, gives applied lessons to jazz writing majors, and directs the Eastman Jazz Ensemble and the Eastman Studio Orchestra. As a pianist he has performed with classical orchestras and chamber ensembles under the direction of Pierre Boulez, Lukas Foss and Louis Lane, and has performed and recorded with such jazz artists as Clark Terry, Al Cohn, Red Mitchell, Phil Woods, Bill Goodwin, Dave Liebman, John Marshall and John Goldsby. He was a prizewinner in the 1972 International Gaudeamus Competition for interpreters of contemporary music, and has been the recipient of several jazz composition grants from the Ohio Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. He joined the Eastman faculty in 1973, and was instrumental in designing both the graduate and undergraduate curricula for Eastman’s jazz studies program. Many of his students have been heard in the big bands of Count Basie, Woody Herman, Buddy Rich, Maynard Ferguson, Thad Jones/Mel Lewis, Chuck Mangione and Maria Schneider, have become successful in the Los Angeles television and film music industry, and are on the faculties of jazz programs in many of the world’s leading music schools.

From 1994 through 2002 Mr. Dobbins was principal director of the WDR Big Band in Cologne, Germany. Concert, radio, television and tour projects under his direction included internationally acclaimed soloists such as Clark Terry, Dave Liebman, Randy Brecker, Gary Bartz, Kevin Mahogany, Art Farmer, Steve Lacy, Paquito D’Rivera, Mark Feldman, Clare Fischer, Peter Erskine, the Kings Singers, and Katia and Marielle Labeque. In 2002 he returned to the Eastman faculty, while continuing work as guest director with the WDR Big Band as well as with the Netherlands Metropole Orchestra in Hilversum.

Advance Music publishes Mr. Dobbins’ compositions and arrangements for big band, chamber music combinations and solo piano. Jazz education programs worldwide have adopted his volumes of transcriptions of classic jazz piano solos and jazz textbooks for use in their courses. These include Chick Corea: Now He Sings, Now He Sobs, Herbie Hancock: Classic Jazz Compositions and Piano Solos, Clare Fischer: Alone Together/Just Me, Jazz Arranging and Composing: a Linear Approach and A Creative Approach to Jazz Piano Harmony. Recent recordings include Preludes & Predilections, volume 4 (solo piano) and Prism: the WDR Big Band plays the music of Bill Dobbins and Peter Erskine (Advance Music), Kevin Mahogany with the WDR Big Band: Pussycat Dues (ENJA), Paquito D’Rivera with the WDR Big Band: Big Band Time (Timba), and Bill Dobbins/John Goldsby/Peter Erskine: Cologne (Fuzzy Music).