Kelly Rossum

Kelly Rossum is an international trumpet artist, improviser and composer. He has performed everything from lead trumpet at New York's famed Birdland jazz club to baroque trumpet in Bad Säckingen, Germany; and from soprano cornet with the North Carolina Brass Band to improvised free jazz in Bangkok, Thailand. As a twenty-first century musician with no stylistic boundaries, he has played at the Vision Festival, SXSW, New York Electro Acoustic Music Festival, Spark Festival of Electronics and Musical Art, 10,000 Lakes Music Festival, Minnesota Sur Seine, numerous blues, jazz, classical and latin music festivals, plus multiple International Trumpet Guild Conferences, including as a featured soloist in Sydney, Australia, as well as repeat appearances at the New York Festival of New Trumpet Music and the Atlanta Trumpet Festival.
A steadfast champion of new music, he has premiered compositions by Dave Douglas, Denis Colin, Kristin Kuster, Peter Knight, Stephanie Richards, Steven Bryant and numerous other musicians' works. In 2015 he premiered Christopher Cook's Prowler, written specifically for Rossum's own genre defying abilities.
Kelly has released five highly acclaimed albums as a leader and has appeared on over 40 recordings as an ensemble musician. He recorded with and was a founding member of both the improvised rock group Electropolis and the Eric Dolphy repertory ensemble Out To Lunch. He is also a founding member of the new electro-acoustic trumpet ensemble, Fifth Bridge.
Kelly Rossum is currently Associate Professor of Trumpet and Jazz Studies at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia. Previous to this appointment, he taught at Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Alabama and at MacPhail Center for Music in Minneapolis, Minnesota, one of the nation's largest community music schools. A dedicated teacher and scholar, Professor Rossum leads the Christopher Newport University trumpet studio and delivers cutting edge research and performance concepts to his students. He has presented improvisation-based research in Osaka, Japan and Bangkok, Thailand, and at past Jazz Education Network and International Association of Jazz Educators conferences. He was the regional presenting scholar for the lecture and film series America's Music: A Film History of Our Popular Music from Blues to Bluegrass to Broadway, in Newport News, Virginia, and Looking at: Jazz, America's Art Form, in Minneapolis, Minnesota; each program receiving grant funding through Tribeca Film Institute and National Video Resources respectively.
Kelly Rossum holds the degrees: Doctor of Musical Arts, from the University of Minnesota, studying under David Baldwin and Gary Bordner; Masters of Music, from the University of North Texas, studying with Keith Johnson, Leonard Candelaria and John Holt; Bachelor of Music, from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he studied with legendary trumpet teacher Dennis Schneider.

From Kelly Rossum