Jazz Studies

Jessica Muñiz-Collado

Jessica Muñiz-Collado is a music career consultant, composer/producer, percussionist, and an Assistant Professor of Music Business at the University of North Texas. She is also the Founder/Owner of NIZCO MUSIC – a music career consulting service that helps musicians compose their careers to their own B.E.A.T. (Business, Education, Artist Development, Technology). Her company offers services in music career planning, music technology training, artist development, and more.

Federico Llach

Raised in Buenos Aires as a jazz performer, music for media producer and classical composer, Federico Llach creates music that seeks to combine the old and the new, as well as the intimacy of concert music with the energy of popular music. His sound palette has been forever changed as a result of his experience with modular synthesizers, samplers and electronics of all kinds, which usually appear uniquely blended with acoustic instruments in his music.

Madison Russell

Raised in North Texas, Madison Russell attended Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas, Texas. At Booker T., she participated in the Monterey Jazz Festival and sang on local and national television as part of the Jazz Singers, Meistersingers, and Choir. She participated as a classical percussionist in the Symphony Orchestra and Wind Ensemble. Madison was named a 2015 YoungArts winner in Voice (Jazz) by the National YoungArts Foundation. 

Kimberly Hannon Teal

Kimberly Hannon Teal joined the faculty at UNT in August of 2021 as assistant professor of Jazz history and research. Her work addresses contemporary jazz, and she is interested in how live performance contexts contribute to musical experiences and meaning. Her book Jazz Places: How Performances Spaces Shape Jazz History was published by the University of California Press in 2021. She holds a PhD in historical musicology from the Eastman School of Music, where she also taught music history and served as the Director of Graduate Advising.

Rob Parton

Rob Parton is a busy and versatile trumpet player and is highly regarded as a studio, theatre and jazz musician, performer, educator and bandleader. He is chair of Jazz Studies at UNT.

Philip Dizack

Philip Dizack, one of the most important jazz trumpeters of his generation, is emerging as an integral player of the worldwide jazz scene, fulfilling DownBeat magazine's 2007 proclamation “[one of twenty-five] Trumpet Players for the Future.” 

Nick Finzer

Nick Finzer is one of the most dynamic musicians of the millennial generation. An award-winning composer, arranger, producer, and trombonist, Finzer is bringing the joy and power of Jazz to both traditional fans and the most modern 21st-century audiences. He’s on a mission to be a passionate voice defining the sound of Jazz in this age while also bringing street cred to the trombone with a bold, tight sound.

Dave Meder

Pianist, composer, and educator Dave Meder is one of the prominent artists of his generation, known for a broad musical palette and interdisciplinary approach recognized in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition, the American Pianists Awards, and the Chamber Music America New Jazz Works commissioning program. His defining aesthetic is a strikingly postmodern sense of stylistic adventure, incorporating what All About Jazz describes as “a vibrant hybrid of the whole American spectrum.”

Scott Tixier

Scott Tixier is a five-time affiliated GRAMMY award-winning French jazz violinist and 2018 DownBeat Critic Poll Winner. He has performed, recorded and toured with such jazz legends and music icons as Stevie Wonder, Kenny Barron, Elton John, Pink Floyd, Ed Sheeran, Cassandra Wilson, Coldplay, Chris Potter, John Legend, Christina Aguilera, Natalie Cole, Anthony Braxton, Ariana Grande and many others.

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