About the Dean of the Phillip and Patricia Frost School of Music
An award-winning educator with 39 years of leadership in higher education, Shelton (Shelly) Berg is Dean and Patricia L. Frost Professor of Music at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. He is a Steinway piano artist and five-time Grammy-nominated arranger, orchestrator, and producer. His album projects The Deep (Chesky), The Nearness of You (Arbors), Blackbird (Concord) and The Will (CARS), and I Love You Porgy/There’s a Boat That’s Leavin’ Soon For New York are critically-acclaimed. Berg earned Grammy nomination as co-producer of Gloria Estefan: The Standards (Sony). Recent projects include recording and/or performing with Tony Bennett, Seal, Lizz Wright, Andra Day, Clint Holmes, Renée Fleming, and Arturo Sandoval. He is also the host of a monthly radio show Generation Next on Sirius XM, music director of The Jazz Cruise, and artistic advisor for the Jazz Roots series at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami.
Before joining the Frost School of Music, Shelly Berg was the McCoy/Sample Professor of Jazz Studies at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California and a past president of the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE). In 2003 he was honored as Educator of the Year by the Los Angeles Jazz Society and in 2002 received the IAJE Lawrence Berk Leadership Award. In 2000 the Los Angeles Times named him one of three “Educators for the Millennium.”
His textbooks include Essentials of Jazz Theory, the Chop-Monster beginning improvisation series, Rhythm Section Workshop for Jazz Directors (Alfred Music) and Jazz Improvisation: The Goal-Note Method (Kendor). He has appeared as a performer and lecturer throughout the United States as well as in Canada, China, Mexico, Europe, Israel, Japan, Romania and Venezuela.
Honors & Acknowledgements
Career Highlights & Honors, Awards & Competitions
Career Highlights
- Former McCoy/Sample Professor of Jazz Studies at USC Thornton School of Music
- Past president of the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE)
- Artistic advisor for Jazz Roots at the Adrienne Arsht Center
- Musical director of The Jazz Cruise
- Host of Generation Next on Sirius FM
- Performed at The Apollo Celebrates Ella Fizgerald
- Three-time co-musical director and performer at the National White House Tree Lighting Ceremony
- Co-curator with Steve Miller of: T-Bone walker: At Bridge from Blues to Jazz at the Lincoln Center
- Arranged and orchestrated a variety of songs for Tony Bennett’s 90th birthday celebration at Radio City Music Hall
- Performed and recorded with the best of them including Stevie Wonder, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Gloria Estefan,
- Steve Miller, Chicago and many more.
- Orchestrated music for television and motion pictures
Honors, Awards & Competitions
- Five-time Grammy Award nominee
- Named one of three “Educators for the Millennium” byThe Los Angeles Times
- Hailed by the All Music Guide as “one of the finest pianists around in the early 21st century playing modern mainstream jazz”
