Having played in concert halls and public radio stations across the world and been immortalized in countless YouTube videos, along with performing as tubist with the Phoenix Chamber Brass, Jesse Chavez is revisiting solo performance, composing, and teaching as a Graduate Assistant to R. Winston Morris at Tennessee Technological University, where Chavez performs as a part of the internationally acclaimed Tennessee Tech Tuba Ensemble.
Chavez—whose “virtuosic techniques and quicksilver double tonguing” was called “alarmingly agile” in a review of the Luzerne Music Festival (held annually in the Adirondack Mountains of New York state)—has also performed with the Boston Pops Orchestra and at New York’s Carnegie Hall, in a three-city tour of Japan, and at a variety of music festivals, including the Tanglewood Music Festival; the International Institute & Festival at Roundtop (Texas); the 68th annual Engadin Music Festival in the Swiss Alps; the Festival de Musica de Camara in Aguascalientes, Mexico; the Midwest Clinic (Chicago); the International Trumpet Guild Conference in Calgary, Canada; and many more. Chavez has given clinics and master classes at colleges and universities nationwide, including Boston Conservatory, Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge), Notre Dame University (South Bend, Indiana), the Ohio State University in Columbus, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and University of North Texas–Denton.
A native of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Chavez’s first music lessons were on the piano, but he took up the tuba in his early teens and in high school was an All-State musician, attended the prestigious Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts, and began planning a career in music. He has also studied with Demondrae Thurman (Sotto Voce quartet; University of Alabama), Nat McIntosh (Sotto Voce quartet; Dallas Brass), and Marcus Arnold. In his spare time, Chavez composes and arranges for both small and large wind ensembles.
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