David Baker (composer)
David Nathaniel Baker Jr. (December 21, 1931 – March 26, 2016) was an American jazz composer, conductor, and musician from Indianapolis, as well as a professor of jazz studies at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Baker is best known as an educator and founder of the jazz studies program. From 1991 to 2012, he was conductor and musical and artistic director for the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra. He has more than 65 recordings, 70 books, and 400 articles to his credit. He received the James Smithson Medal from the Smithsonian Institution, an American Jazz Masters Award, a National Association of Jazz Educators Hall of Fame Award, a Sagamore of the Wabash award, and a Governor's Arts Award from the State of Indiana. Baker also held leadership positions in several arts and music associations. The Indiana Historical Society named Baker an Indiana Living Legend in 2001. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts named him a Living Jazz Legend in 2007 ...
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Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra
The Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra (SJMO) is the national jazz orchestra of the United States. It is based at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., where it is the orchestra-in-residence. The SJMO was founded in 1990 with the dual mission of performing and preserving American jazz masterworks and raising public awareness and understanding of the genre. History An Act of Congress established the orchestra in 1990 with an appropriation to the Smithsonian Institution of $242,000. In 1991 Gunther Schuller and David Baker became the original artistic and musical directors of the orchestra, which began performing in 1991. Five years later Baker became its sole artistic and musical director. The inaugural season, jointly conducted by Schuller and Baker, consisted of six weekends of free concerts for which the conductors collected or commissioned transcriptions of the original arrangements of the works to be presented and provided the orchestra's member ...
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