Award-winning jazz educator Don Zentz presents what he believes to be the top ten essentials that are a must to achieving real success with your jazz band and bringing integrity to the music. Transforming abstract concepts into the concrete, directors will enjoy surveying the particulars and understanding what it takes in and out of rehearsal to get their jazz band to the next level.
Don Zentz
- Biographical Information
Don Zentz is in his thirty-sixth year of teaching and is currently the Director of Jazz Studies at the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville. He has held music professorships at the University of North Florida, Valdosta State University, and Florida Community College at Jax. His high school and collegiate jazz ensembles have performed at The Midwest Clinic, JEN and IAJE conferences, the Montreux Jazz Festival, and music educator's conferences in Florida and Georgia. His University of North Florida Jazz Ensemble won the 1997 Notre Dame Jazz Festival and 1998 National Collegiate Jazz Festival. Don’s Douglas Anderson jazz ensemble won Swing Central 2017 and the 2019 DownBeat Magazine student music award for large jazz ensemble. The fifty-plus guest artists that have performed with his jazz ensembles include Herbie Hancock, Arturo Sandoval, Ernie Watts, and John Fedchock. He has directed the middle and high school All-State jazz bands in Florida along with those in Georgia, Alabama, Maine, and Delaware. Originally hired at the University of North Florida by jazz education pioneer Rich Matteson, Don was named an Outstanding Undergraduate Professor at UNF in 1996 and was the recipient of DownBeat’s Jazz Education Achievement Award in 1999. He served two terms as the Florida Unit president of IAJE. Don has been a Keilwerth Saxophones performing artist since 1995. He has been an adjudicator for the Florida Bandmasters Association for over 30 years. Other adjudication activity includes the South Carolina Band Directors State Jazz Band Assessment and Festival Disney.