Don Zentz Biography

Don Zentz

Don Zentz retired in 2025 after forty-one years of teaching at all levels in music education, including arts administration.  An honor graduate of Valdosta State University, Don concluded his career as the Director of Jazz Studies at the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville, Florida.  Prior he held music professorships at the University of North Florida, Valdosta State University, and Florida Community College at Jacksonville, and served as a high school and middle school band director in Florida and Georgia.  Don was selected to teach in the Georgia Governors Honors Program during the summers of the 1990’s.  His jazz ensembles have performed at national conferences that include The Midwest Clinic, Jazz Educators Network, and the International of Jazz Educators Association.  His entry into higher education came when jazz education pioneer Rich Matteson hired Don onto his jazz faculty at the University of North Florida (UNF).  Under his direction, the UNF Jazz Ensemble won the National Collegiate Jazz Festival, took top honors at the Notre Dame Jazz Festival, received the program’s first DownBeat recognitions, and appeared on the international stage for the first time at the major jazz festivals in Europe.  While at the Douglas Anderson SOTA, Don’s top jazz ensemble placed first at Swing Central 2017, Basically Basie 2021, and at the 2022 and 2023 National Jazz Festival competitions.  The band performed three times at JEN, twice at The Midwest Clinic, and once at the Western International Band Clinic in Seattle.  For nine consecutive years the band either won or placed in their category in DownBeat.  The fifty plus artists that have performed with Don’s jazz ensembles reads like a “who’s who” in jazz.  These legends include Herbie Hancock, Arturo Sandoval, Terry Gibbs, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Eddie Daniels, Joe Lovano, Ernie Watts, and Maria Schneider.  Don enjoys much demand as a clinician, adjudicator, and performer in both jazz and classical idioms.  He has directed the All-State Jazz Bands of Florida, Ohio, Georgia, Alabama, and Maine, and the Delaware All-State Symphonic Band.  He has been published in The Instrumentalist, Music Educators Journal, and GIA’s Teaching Music Through Performance in Jazz (3^rd Edition).  For over twenty years Don was a per service saxophonist with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra and remains a top-call player throughout the southeastern United States.  He has been a Keilwerth Saxophones performing artist since 1995.  Don served two terms as the Florida Unit president of IAJE, creating and implementing an annual state jazz workshop.  His individual honors include UNF’s Outstanding Undergraduate Professor Award, DownBeat’s Jazz Education Achievement Award, the National Jazz Festival’s Jazz Educator of the Year, JEN’s John LaPorta Jazz Educator Award, the Jacksonville Cultural Council’s Arts Educator of the Year, and induction into the Jacksonville Jazz Festival’s Hall of Fame.  Don is a member of Phi Beta Mu, an honorary fraternity for band directors, and was elected to The Midwest Clinic Board of Directors in 2023.