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Bethany Robinson (Indianapolis, IN) is a Yamaha Performing Artist, GRAMMY Music Educator Award Finalist, NAfME Jazz Council Chair, Past-President of the Indiana Jazz Educators Association, and serves on the Jazz Education Network Executive Board. She joined the faculty of Purdue University as the Director of Jazz in 2024 after building the jazz program at Noblesville Schools from one to six jazz ensembles, where the top jazz ensemble was a two-time Jazz at Lincoln Center Essentially Ellington Finalist and Indiana ISSMA Jazz State Honor Band in 2023. She is also the Festival Director for the Purdue Jazz Festival, the largest college-run jazz festival in the country.
Robinson was the 2014 Indiana Jazz Educator of the Year, 2015 Noblesville Teacher of the Year, 2016 Indiana Teacher of the Year Semi-Finalist, named a 2022 Jazz Hero by the Jazz Journalists Association, and the 2023 Indiana Outstanding High School Music Educator of the Year. She is a two-time Lilly Teacher Creativity Fellow, receiving grants to study jazz in both the US (2011) and Brazil (2019). Robinson has co-led Indiana Jazz Girls Day since 2018, hosting workshops and side-by-side concerts for students around the state of Indiana to elevate student leaders through jazz.
Robinson has been a keynote speaker and presenter around the globe, including the Australia National Band and Orchestra Conference; The Midwest Clinic; Glasgow CREATE! in Scotland; and Indiana, Iowa, New York, and Oklahoma state music educator conferences. She was recently the guest conductor for the Iowa, New York, and North Carolina All-State Jazz Ensembles, and the chief adjudicator and guest artist for the 2024 Victorian Schools’ Jazz Festival in Melbourne, Australia, and at the 2025 Jazz Woche Jazz Festival in Hanover, Germany. She is a clinician and adjudicator independently and for Jazz at Lincoln Center, Yamaha, Music for All, and an avid performer on upright bass, electric bass, and vocals.