Ron Westray
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Bio
Professor Ron Westray’s professional contributions encompass a
stunning list of achievements in the areas of performance,
composition, recording, and publishing. Since the early nineties he
has performed as trombonist or lead trombonist with the most
prestigious jazz ensembles in the world, including the Mingus Big
Band, New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, The Wynton
Marsalis Septet, Irving Mayfield and the New Orleans Jazz
Orchestra, and the Marcus Roberts Ensemble, in hundreds of
performances around the globe. His compositions for jazz big
band, jazz orchestra and smaller jazz ensembles range from
original works to arrangements and/or adaptations of pre-existing
works, some published by Walrus Music Publishing, some through
his own company Wooden Flute Publishing. Jazz @ Lincoln Center
has commissioned two of Westray’s works: Chivalrous
Misdemeanors (selected tales from Cervante’s Don Quixote)
funded through a grant from the Greenwald Foundation (via JALC),
receiving a Pulitzer Prize nomination, and the jazz suite Scenes in
the City: The Music of Charles Mingus. Westray is associated in a
variety of roles on recordings for more than a dozen labels: as
leader, producer, performer, composer, arranger, or in
combination.
RON WESTRAY has held the Oscar Peterson Chair in Jazz Performance at
York University in Toronto since 2009. Ron is a prodigious composer and arranger of music
for ensembles of various sizes. Westray got his start in jazz touring with the Marcus
Roberts septet in the early 1990s. He has been featured on all of Roberts’ large ensemble recordings
since that time.Westray went on to become lead trombonist and arranger in the Lincoln
Center Jazz Orchestra, a position that he held for 12 years before entering academia via the
faculty at the University of Texas in Austin in 2005. Westray is a role model and mentor for younger
musicians world-wide.
“Ron Westray has such a pure, deep, rich sound on the trombone—it’s just
beautiful. He is a very charismatic performer who plays with tremendous precision, virtuosity,
and soul.” - Marcus Roberts