Ken
Schaphorst
Chair, Jazz
Studies; Director of
Jazz Orchestra, Director, Youth Jazz Orchestra (Prep)
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photo by Andrew Hurlbut |
A founding member of the Boston-based Jazz Composers Alliance,
an organization in the tradition of jazz composer-directed ensembles
dedicated to the promotion of new music in the jazz idiom, trumpeter and composer Ken
Schaphorst has been awarded Composition Fellowships from the
National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural
Council, the Wisconsin Arts Board, and Meet the Composer. Created
in 1989, the Ken Schaphorst Big Band has featured many of today’s
most notable young performers, including John Medeski, Uri Caine,
Brad Shepik, Drew Gress, Donny McCaslin and Seamus Blake. The
ensemble has released four recordings on Accurate Records, Making
Lunch (1989), After Blue (1991), When the Moon
Jumps (1994) and Over the Rainbow (1997). Ken Schaphorst Big Band: Purple, was
released on Naxos Jazz in January, 1999. Schaphorst's latest recording for Accurate, Indigenous Technology (2003), features Schaphorst's playing on trumpet and piano in a trio setting with cellist Matt Turner and percussionist Dane Richeson. Schaphorst is also a founding member of the Jazz
Composers Alliance, a Boston-based non-profit corporation promoting new music in the jazz idiom since 1985.
Since coming to NEC as Chair of the Jazz Studies and Improvisation Department in 2001, Schaphorst has directed the Jazz Orchestra in its performance of new music and traditional big band repertoire. In recent years, the ensemble has performed under the direction of guest artists Django Bates, Jimmy Heath, John Hollenbeck, Jim McNeely and Maria Schneider. Named Best College Big Band in the 2004 Downbeat Student Music Awards, the ensemble has won critical acclaim for its recordings and for its performances throughout the country.
Schaphorst’s three-movement
Concerto for John Medeski, composed for his friend and fellow
NEC alumnus, was commissioned by the National Endowment for
the Arts. He has received commissions from the NEA, Marimolin,
Orange Then Blue, Boston University, Lawrence University, the
Fox Valley Arts Alliance, the Jazz Composers Alliance, the Wisconsin
Arts Board, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, Ball State University, and
Augustana College.
B.A., Swarthmore College; M.M., New England Conservatory;
D.M.A., Boston University. Composition with Thomas Oboe Lee,
Gerald Levinson, William Thomas McKinley, Bernard Rands. Recordings
on JCA, Accurate, Naxos. Former faculty of Lawrence University.
Send Ken Schaphorst an email