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Judd Danby

Judd Danby is a composer, jazz pianist, and music educator.

About Me

Judd Danby (b. 1966) is a concert music composer working in traditional and electronic media, a jazz performer and composer/arranger, and serves as Composer-in-residence at the Arts & Communications Academy at Jefferson High School in Lafayette, IN, where he works with students in the areas of music theory, composition, and jazz improvisation. He is also an Adjunct Instructor of jazz piano at Purdue University, Chair of the Indiana Music Educators Association annual Composition Competition, and serves as Artistic Director of The Jazz Club, a member-supported jazz concert series in the Lafayette, IN, area. He has twice been an Associate Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.

Danby's works have been performed at venues throughout the U.S., including the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Ball State University, Connecticut College, Indiana University, Kansas State University, Merkin Hall, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Iowa, and Wabash College. His The Piano's Stuck, premiered by Marilyn Nonken, was published by the cutting-edge (and now defunct) Soundout Digital Press, an early online publisher of new music. His Mirrors for percussion quartet is published by Media Press, and his electronic work Twelve Can Play That Game appears on the recording Sound Speculations (University of Illinois CD EMS 9300). His jazz works appear on Los Blancos Latin Jazz Band’s Receta Original (Red Pepper Records CD374). His compositions have been featured on the radio by WILL–FM (Urbana, IL), WBAA–Purdue’s Inside Jazz and WICR in Indianapolis.

As a jazz pianist Danby performs with his quartet, with the InterPlay quartet, the Los Blancos Latin Jazz Band, the Randy Salman Quartet, and other jazz ensembles throughout central Indiana. As an improvising performer in the University of Illinois New Music Ensemble he has performed with Roscoe Mitchell and recorded Anthony Braxton’s Composition 165 under the composer’s direction (New Albion 050).

Danby holds degrees from Rutgers University (B. Mus. in jazz performance) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (M. Mus. and A.Mus.D. in composition-theory). He studied jazz performance with Kenny Barron, Ted Dunbar, William Fielder, John Garvey, Ranny Reeve, and Sahib Shihab, jazz arranging with Mark Kirk, and composition and electroacoustic music with Thomas Fredrickson, John Melby, Scott Wyatt, and Paul Martin Zonn. At the Atlantic Center for the Arts he studied with Milton Babbitt and Donald Martino.