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Dennis Crystal (Thousand Oaks, CA) has dedicated his professional life to excellence in jazz education. He served as the Vice President of Jazz Education for the Southern California School Band and Orchestra Association (SCSBOA) from 2022 to 2025. In that time, Dennis established the first Essentially Ellington Regional Festival in Southern California at Riverside City College and also built the Summer Jazz Institute in collaboration with the California Alliance for Jazz and Jazz at Lincoln Center. The Summer Jazz Institute is a two-day professional development event at California State University, Long Beach for music educators focusing on every aspect of jazz pedagogy and performance.
In addition to his service to the professional community, he has been teaching high school and middle school band for 24 years, spending the last 18 as the Director of Bands at Newbury Park High School. Crystal is a drummer/percussionist who graduated in 2001 from the USC Thornton School of Music with a Bachelor of Music degree in Music Education, with an emphasis in Jazz Studies, studying with Ndugu Chancler, Jeff Hamilton, John Clayton, Shelly Berg, and Aarón Serfaty. He received his Master of Music from the American Band College at Southern Oregon University in 2007 and currently lives in Thousand Oaks with his amazingly supportive wife, three beautiful children, and two dogs (Gus and Lilly).