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Bethany Robinson (West Lafayette, Indiana) 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 is currently the Director of Jazz for Purdue University 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.
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 and culture in both the US (2011) and Brazil (2019). Bethany co-leads 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.
Bethany has been a keynote speaker and presenter around the globe, including the Australia National Band and Orchestra Conference (2021), Midwest Clinic International Band and Orchestra Convention (2022), and State Music Educator Conferences in Indiana, Oklahoma, and New York. Bethany was the guest conductor for the 2024 New York All State Jazz Ensemble and the chief adjudicator and guest artist for the 2024 Victorian Schools’ Jazz Festival in Melbourne, Australia. She is a clinician and adjudicator independently and for Jazz at Lincoln Center, and an avid performer on upright bass, electric bass, and vocals.