Conductor
Dr. Jason Noble (he/him/his) returns as Conductor of the Columbia University Wind Ensemble (CUWE), effective Fall 2024. He currently serves as Associate Professor of Music at The City University of New York (CUNY), Lehman College, and concurrently serves as a part-time faculty member at New York University and a guest faculty artist at the Manhattan School of Music. At Lehman College, he teaches graduate conducting and creative instrumental teaching strategies for Master of Arts (M.A.T.) students seeking New York State P12 music certification, and mentors graduate students through an innovative emerging teacher preparation program. At NYU, he has recently conducted the NYU Wind Symphony (2021-2023), leading the ensemble to its first series of commissions through four renowned composers for band, and he continues to teach the NYU instrumental conducting, materials, techniques, and synthesis course sequence. At the Manhattan School of Music, he has recently conducted the MSM Camerata Nova ensemble and frequently teaches the MSM WBOTS orchestral core repertoire training sequence course as an invited guest artist. Throughout his 24-year career in both secondary and university instrumental ensemble direction, he has received national and international acclaim in the areas of creative and innovative music curricular reform and progressive music education. He has conducted invited full-length concerts 21 times at Carnegie Hall and at many of the finest concert halls across the world on six continents, from Sydney, Australia, to Vienna, Austria, to Beijing, China. He holds degrees from Teachers College, Columbia University (Ed.D.C.T., College Teaching of Music), where he was the recipient of the Florence K. Geffen Endowed Fellowship, New York University (M.A., Music Education) and the Frost School of Music, University of Miami (B.M., Music Education, cum laude).
Prior to his current teaching and conducting appointments, he served as Conductor of the Columbia University Wind Ensemble for eight seasons (2013-2021), garnering national and international acclaim, leading the commission of new works by diverse composers, and leading the group to its first three full-length featured evening performances at Carnegie Hall since 1965 (2016, 2017, 2019). As Director of Bands for fifteen years at Scarsdale High School (Scarsdale, NY), he piloted, tested, and implemented a progressive and successful Maxine Greene and John Dewey-inspired Democracy in Band curriculum based on intrinsic motivation, student choice/voice, and shared responsibility without the typical exogenous rewards systems found in most school band programs. His primary teachers and mentors were Gary Green (University of Miami), Nicholas DeCarbo (University of Miami), David Elliott (NYU), Paul Cohen (NYU), Justin Dello Joio (NYU), Maxine Greene (Teachers College, Columbia University), and Randall Everett Allsup (Teachers College, Columbia University).
Dedicated to the pursuit of new music, he began in 2004 with the commissioning of a new significant work, “Yosemite Autumn,” by composer Mark Camphouse. Since that commissioning project, he has led commissions by composers Kevin Day, Josh Trentadue, Katahj Copley, Harrison Collins, Julie Giroux, Patrick Burns, Catherine Likhuta, and Michael Martin. He has joined consortia commissions of numerous diverse and emerging composers and continues to pursue the development of new music. Ensembles under his full-time educational and creative direction have consistently received national and international acclaim, released albums with the Mark Custom label (2003, 2006), and have performed by exclusive competitive invitation at Carnegie Hall (2003, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022), David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center (2020), Salzburg and Vienna, Austria (2009, 2015), Prague, Czech Republic (2009, 2015), Gran Canaria, Spain (2010), Barcelona, Spain (2010), London, England (2013), The Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland (2013), Budapest, Hungary (2015), Belfast, Northern Ireland (2019), Dublin and Cork, Ireland (2019), and Sydney and Melbourne, Australia (2017).
He is in frequent and high demand as a guest conductor, lecturer, program consultant, curriculum consultant, and music performance adjudicator across the United States and internationally. His research interests include band and orchestra education, instrumental music education, neurodivergence in music education, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in music education, LGBTQIA+ studies in music education, and philosophies of music education.