Clinician: FRED STURM
The new Sturm Website

Fred Sturm is the newly appointed Director of Jazz and Improvisational Music at the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music in Appleton, Wisconsin. He concurrently serves as principal guest conductor of the Hessischer Rundfunk (German Public Radio for the State of Hessen) Big Band in Frankfurt and as visiting conductor of professional jazz ensembles and radio orchestras in Europe; as director of university jazz ensembles and high school all-state jazz bands throughout the U.S.; as clinician at national educational conferences and festivals; and as composer-in-residence for school and university music programs.

His jazz compositions and arrangements have been performed by Bobby McFerrin, Wynton Marsalis, Bob Brookmeyer, Clark Terry, Phil Woods, Dianne Reeves, Lars Jansson, Enrique Telleria, and Hans Ulrik; are published by Lorenz Heritage JazzWorks, Universal Edition, Kendor, Warner Brothers, Advance Music, Ensemble Publications, "Really Good Music," and UNC Jazz Press; have been issued on Concord Jazz, RCA, hrMedia, and Warner Brothers Records; and received a 1998 Grammy Award nomination. Sturm is the 2003 recipient of the ASCAP/IAJE Commission In Honor of Quincy Jones, a prize granted annually to one established jazz composer of international prominence.

He is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Howard Hanson Institute for American Music, and the Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest Fund. His texts, Changes Over Time: The Evolution of Jazz Arranging, Kenny Wheeler: Collected Works on ECM, and Maria Schneider: Evanescence are published by Advance Music (Germany) and Universal Edition (Vienna), and his jazz aural training concept titled All Ears is used by educators throughout America.

Prior to his Lawrence appointment, he served as Professor and Chair of Jazz Studies and Contemporary Media at the Eastman School of Music in New York from 1991-2002, where he directed the internationally acclaimed Eastman Jazz Ensemble, conducted the 70-piece Eastman Studio Orchestra, and coordinated the Eastman jazz composition and arranging program. From 1977 to 1991, he was the Director of Jazz Studies at Lawrence University. In his 25-year university teaching career, Downbeat Magazine has cited his ensembles as the finest in the United States and Canada eight times. He attended Lawrence, Eastman, and the University of North Texas, and was a founding member of the jazz nonet Matrix.