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Jazz Band
The jazz ensembles are open to you, whether you've had extensive experience or none at all. Once you're at camp, you will be placed by audition into one of three big bands. You will be placed into other combos by audition and according to need. The camp explores all aspects of jazz performance.
Please refer to the FAQ section for on-site placement audition information.
Dan Yoder, conductor
Dan Yoder serves as director of jazz studies and teaches jazz history, jazz harmony and arranging, improvisation, and pedagogy. During his eighteen years on the
faculty, the jazz program has grown to include three jazz bands and six combos. Centre Dimensions, the top jazz band directed by Yoder, has achieved acclaim at jazz festivals throughout
the Midwest and East Coast.
Among his publications are compositions for jazz ensemble, saxophone quartet, and saxophone ensemble. He has published articles in the Pennsylvania Music Educators Association News, Westwind, and Jazz Educators Journal. His textbook, Beginning Improvisation, is published by Prentice-Hall.
Professor Yoder is a past president of the Pennsylvania Unit of International Association of Jazz Educators. In 1977 he established the jazz component of Penn State's Summer Music camp.
For more information about the jazz band, contact:
Email: summermusic@outreach.psu.edu
David Stambler, jazz studies
David Stambler,
assistant professor of saxophone, is originally from the Washington, D.C., area. He has established himself as a dynamic teacher and musician throughout the United States, performing both
jazz and classical music. Stambler is active as a recital and symphonic soloist, and as "on-call" saxophonist with many orchestras, including the Baltimore Symphony, the Annapolis
Symphony, the Bay Atlantic Symphony, the National Gallery Orchestra, and the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra. He has performed at the JVC Jazz festival, the Princeton Jazz Fest, the
Smithsonian Institution, and the Kennedy Center, and has accompanied many of the top entertainers in the world today.
Stambler's premieres include November by Elam Sprenkle with the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, Dos Movimientos by Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez with the Bay Atlantic Symphony, and compositions by John Harbison, Gunther Schuller, and Michael Colgrass through the Worldwide Concurrent Premieres and Commission Fund. He has recorded with the Baltimore Symphony, the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, and the Capitol Quartet, and can be heard playing clarinet and saxophone on dozens of nationally broadcast radio and television commercials. As tenor saxophonist and arranger with the Capitol Quartet, he performs frequently in recital venues and with symphony orchestras nationwide.
Stambler studied clarinet at the Oberlin Conservatory, and then received his bachelor of music degree in saxophone from The University of Michigan, where he was a student of Donald Sinta. He holds a master of music degree from the Peabody Institute in Baltimore and is currently finishing doctoral studies at the University of Maryland. He has been the director of the Jazz option of Penn State's High School Summer Music Camp program since 2006.
For more information about the jazz band, contact:
David Stambler
Email: summermusic@outreach.psu.edu
