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Auerbach Associates is pleased to announce that the University of Miami has appointed Shelton G. Berg as the new dean of the Phillip and Patricia Frost School of Music. Berg, the McCoy/Sample Endowed Professor of Jazz Studies in the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California (USC), is an internationally recognized pianist, composer, arranger, and educator and is widely acclaimed for his energetic and innovative approaches to jazz performance, composition, and pedagogy.

Berg joined the Thornton School of Music faculty in 1991, and as chair of the Department of Jazz Studies from 1994 to 2002, he is credited with raising the department’s profile to one of the top jazz studies programs in the nation. He conducts the acclaimed Thornton Jazz Orchestra and has spearheaded many of the department’s successful community outreach programs. He is a past president of the International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE), and he received the association’s prestigious Lawrence Berk Leadership Award in 2000. He is also the 2003 recipient of the Los Angeles Jazz Society’s Educator of the Year award. His groundbreaking book, Jazz Improvisation: The Goal-Note Method, is considered one of the seminal texts on the subject, and his Chop-Monster improvisation series provide an innovative approach to teaching improvisation at a beginning level.

A virtuosic jazz pianist, Berg has performed and recorded with top music industry professionals, including Chicago, KISS, Richard Marx, Steve Miller, Joe Cocker, Morten Lauridson, Carole King, Patti Austin, Monica Mancini, Mickey Gilley, Louie Bellson, Ray Charles, and the Count Basie Orchestra. As a composer/arranger he has contributed and/or orchestrated music for major motion picture and television studios, including 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers Pictures, ABC, CBS, and NBC networks, and HBO. He has recorded with and/or contributed music to such major record companies as Sony, Warner Brothers, EMI, CBS, and Capitol. He has written for the Royal Philharmonic and American Symphony, as well as orchestras in Los Angeles, Houston, Boston, Chicago, and Atlanta. In 2001 Berg orchestrated “Japan Concerto,” commemorating the tenth anniversary of the emperor of Japan’s coronation. The concerto was performed to a live audience of 100,000 and televised to millions. He also was commissioned to compose “Turn It On,” the official theme of the 1986 Olympic Festival.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Berg was accepted into the gifted program at the Cleveland Institute of Music at age 6 and was performing professionally at 13. He received a Bachelor of Music and Master of Music in piano performance from the University of Houston. From 1979 to 1981, he was chair of Instrumental Music at San Jacinto College North in North Shore, Texas. He was chair of Instrumental and Commercial Music at the San Jacinto College in Pasadena, Texas from 1981 to 1991.

Berg will begin his tenure as dean of the Frost School of Music effective June 1, 2007.