Pictured is Josh Murray, band director of Rio Americano High School, and winner of the Sacramento Jazz Education Foundation jazz educator award. Photo courtesy of the Sacramento Jazz Education Foundation 

SACRAMENTO REGION, CA (MPG) - The Sacramento Jazz Education Foundation (SacJEF) has chosen Josh Murray, band director of Rio Americano High School, for its prestigious jazz educator award. The honor is presented every two years at the annual Teagarden Jazz Festival at Sacramento State, and recognizes a regional jazz educator with a long, consistent record of providing traditional jazz education.

This year’s award will be presented at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 7 at Capistrano Hall, on the Sacramento State campus.

An accomplished saxophonist, Murray has been Band Director at Rio Americano High School since 1998. Rio’s AM Jazz Ensemble has been a finalist at the Essentially Ellington Festival twelve times, was chosen as winners of the 2019 national “Perform With Bob Mintzer” competition, recently hosted and opened a concert with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and has performed worldwide on tours of Japan, China, Argentina, Italy, Spain, Australia, Ireland, Austria, The Czech Republic and South Korea. Rio’s musicians and bands have won dozens of DownBeat Magazine Student Music Awards and are four-time winners of the Charles Mingus Festival’s combo category.

Murray’s performing credits include shows with Wycliffe Gordon, Phil Woods, Donny McCaslin, Jimmy Smith and the Drifters. He is a contributing author to Teaching Music Through Performance in Jazz, Vol. 2, was selected as a “Sacramento Hero of the Arts” and was awarded the California Music Education Association (CMEA’s) Jazz Education Award, both in 2024.

Since its inauguration, the Teagarden Jazz festival has benefitted from Murray’s dedication to early jazz education with combos from Rio Americano participating at each year’s event and his students consistently recognized with performance excellence awards and scholarships.

“The primary goal of the Foundation is to pass the torch of jazz music to the next generation,” said Nancy Parker, president of the SacJEF board. “Some of our recent festival clinicians and current band directors at the Teagarden Festival were once Josh’s students. There is no finer example of the spirit of our mission than inspiring students to go on to educate the next generation of jazz performers, teachers and fans. He is truly deserving of this award.”

The Teagarden Jazz Festival, sponsored by the Sacramento Jazz Education Foundation in partnership with Sacramento State’s Jazz Studies Program, is one of the most uniquely educational jazz events in the country as the only dedicated student event focused exclusively on the performance and preservation of Traditional Jazz. More than $14,000 in individual scholarships and awards are offered as part of the educational, non-competitive festival. It occurs annually in February.

The Sacramento Jazz Education Foundation supports and promotes the education of early jazz for young musicians and educators, teaching teamwork and collaboration skills that build confidence, belonging and fulfillment. We create and support joyful environments for music performance and artistic expression.

Through donations and endowments, the Foundation sponsors and manages programs such as The Teagarden Jazz Camp (two one-week annual summer jazz camps); Teagarden Jazz Festival: for Young Musicians; Music Lessons Awards (presented annually to approximately 25 young musicians so they can afford private music lessons with an emphasis on Jazz); TNT (The New Traditionalists, a regional honor band of High School jazz musicians); Instrument Match (a program to match donated instruments with youth musicians); The Trad Jazz Project (a partnership with local schools to sponsor clinics and music instructors to teach traditional jazz in school band programs).

For more information on the Sacramento Jazz Education Foundation and its programs, visit www.sacjef.org. For the festival, visit www.teagardenjazzfestival.org.