Brubeck Institute director to lead new San Francisco Conservatory of Music program

Simon Rowe, executive director of the Brubeck Institute at University of the Pacific, has accepted an appointment as the new executive director of Roots, Jazz and American Music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Rowe will continue at the Brubeck Institute until he begins his new position in August, at which time Patrick Langham, professor and director of Jazz Studies at Pacific, will begin serving as interim director.

Langham

Rowe, who joined Pacific in 2011, has led the nationally respected Brubeck Institute through transformative change. He earned nationwide attention for the Brubeck Institute by forming partnerships for jazz presentation and education with the United Nations, the Smithsonian and Jazz at Lincoln Center. Locally, Rowe expanded the annual Brubeck Festival into a major regional event and established the Take 5 Jazz Club along Stockton's Miracle Mile as a venue for performances by jazz artists at all levels and as a tool for local jazz education outreach. He increased learning opportunities for international students and faculty through the expansion of the Summer Jazz Colony and jazz education outreach to local schoolchildren through the Brubeck Outreach Program.

In his new role, Rowe will spearhead the launch of the new Roots, Jazz, and American Music program, which is a collaboration between the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, jazz concert venue SFJAZZ, and its all-star resident ensemble, SFJAZZ Collective.

Langham brings to his new role more than a dozen years of experience at Pacific's Conservatory of Music, where he developed and implemented the highly regarded Jazz Studies degree program. He directs the Pacific Jazz Ensemble, the jazz combos, teaches courses in improvisation, jazz history and theory, and teaches in the Brubeck Institute Fellows program, the Brubeck Institute Summer Jazz Colony, the Brubeck Institute Jazz Camp and the Pacific Music Camps. Prior to joining Pacific, Langham taught and directed jazz music courses and programs at the University of South Carolina-Spartanburg and Tusculum College in Knoxville, Tennessee, and created and operated a jazz camp at USC-Spartanburg.

Established by University of the Pacific in 2000 to honor alumni Dave and Iola Brubeck, the Brubeck Institute impacts society through the arts, continuing the Brubeck's lifelong work in education, community engagement and as a catalyst for social change. Institute programs include the Brubeck Collection, the Brubeck Festival, the Outreach Program, the Summer Jazz Colony and the Brubeck Fellowship Program. Brubeck Fellows, comprising the Brubeck Institute Jazz Quintet, are winners of seven DownBeat awards for best collegiate jazz group in the country. Visit BrubeckInstitute.org for more information about Dave Brubeck, The Brubeck Institute and The Brubeck Festival.

Media contact:
Claudia Morain | cmorain@pacific.edu | 209.946.2313 (office) | 209.479.9894 (cell)