About James Ketch, Music Director of the NCJRO

James Ketch was born in Evanston, Illinois in 1952. He studied music at Indiana State University (B.S. 1974) and at the University of Illinois-Urbana (M.S. 1976). Professor Ketch joined the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1977. He has held prior teaching positions at Southern Utah State University and Illinois Wesleyan University. Professor Ketch serves as Instructor of Trumpet and Director of Jazz Studies at UNC where he teaches applied trumpet, classroom courses in jazz history and improvisation, and conducts the UNC Jazz Band.

James Ketch enjoys a varied career as both professional trumpeter and educator. As a Bach trumpet artist and clinician for the Selmer Corporation, Mr. Ketch is in demand as both a classical and jazz artist. As Music Director of the North Carolina Jazz Repertory Orchestra (NCJRO) he has established himself as an outstanding performer in both traditional and contemporary jazz styles. His leadership of the NCJRO has resulted in three compact disc recordings Holiday Jazz Blizzard (1998), Benny Goodman: The Swing Collection (1999) and Duke Ellington: A Centennial Collection (1999) and two statewide PBS-TV broadcasts Duke Ellington: A Concert of Sacred Music (1995-1996) and This is Jazz! (1997). The NCJRO and Professor Ketch have received praise from nationally known figures including Wynton Marsalis, John Edward Hasse, David Berger, Mark Tucker, and David Baker.

Equally adept as a classical musician, Mr. Ketch has been featured soloist in performances of the most significant works for the trumpet including the Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, and the Concertos of Haydn and Hummel. He has performed in over a dozen conferences of the International Trumpet Guild and has chaired several events at those conferences including the 1998 Jazz Improvisation Competition at the University of Kentucky-Lexington. As a freelance musician he is frequently heard with the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, in pit orchestras for touring Broadway productions and the North Carolina Theater, with singing groups like The Temptations, The Four Tops, Ben E. King, and the Manhattan Transfer, and with school bands and jazz ensembles across the country.

As an educator, Mr. Ketch has been the recipient of the two highest teaching awards presented on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - the Tanner Award (1992) and a Bowman and Gordon Gray Professorship (1993-1996). In 1995 he was selected by a university committee of students and administrators to serve as the Mid-Winter Commencement Speaker at the Dean E. Smith Center. As Director of Jazz Studies, Professor Ketch has spearheaded a program that now includes two big bands and five combos as well as courses in jazz history, theory/harmony, improvisation, and composing and arranging. The program has produced two compact discs See The World (1999) and Passages - Europe 2000 (2000). On the strength of those performances the UNC Jazz Band was invited to perform at three of Europe's most prestigious jazz festivals in the summer of 2000 including, Jazz a Vienne (France), The Montreux Jazz Festival (Switzerland), and The North Sea Jazz Festival (The Netherlands). Professor Ketch and his jazz students are commended for their work by Wynton Marsalis in the publication Sweet Swing Blues on the Road.


Jim practicing for his concert appearance in Switzerland