June 24, 2025

The acclaimed composer, conductor, and saxophonist succeeds Ingrid Jensen and will assume the role effective July 1, 2025.

For Immediate Release:

NEW YORK, June 24, 2025 – Renowned international music conservatory Manhattan School of Music (MSM) announced today that acclaimed composer, conductor, and saxophonist Jim Saltzman has been appointed Dean of the School’s prestigious Jazz Arts division, effective July 1, 2025. He assumes the mantle from trumpeter and educator Ingrid Jensen, who has led MSM Jazz Arts since July 2020 (Ms. Jensen will remain on the MSM faculty).

“A superb teacher with a durable track record on the MSM Jazz Arts faculty and an artist whose impressive musicianship and inventiveness continue to inspire, Jim will provide a smooth transition into a new era of Jazz Arts at Manhattan School of Music, one that builds on a learning environment characterized by generosity of spirit and artistic excellence,” says MSM President James Gandre.

As an artist, Dr. Saltzman, who has taught at MSM for 14 years (starting on the Precollege faculty in 2011 and joining the Jazz Arts faculty in 2015), comes armed with a rich harmonic palette, colorful and commanding sound, and diverse compositions. He has been quietly developing his creative voice in the greater New York City jazz community for over 20 years. Hailed by the Boston Globe as a “postmodern jazz saxophonist [who] plays with passion and intensity” and by All Music as “a force to be reckoned with,” Dr. Saltzman has performed with an impressive array of musicians, including James Moody, Eddie Gomez, George Coleman, Jon Faddis (a fellow member of the MSM faculty), and many more, and at many of New York’s leading jazz venues. Balancing a deep range of artistry and pedagogy, he is a strong role model for both students and colleagues.

As a teacher at MSM, Dr. Saltzman has taught numerous classes, including Jazz History, Jazz Pedagogy, Jazz Harmony/Counterpoint, Jazz Ear Training, Jazz Combos, and lessons, and he has been a frequent conductor of the MSM Big Band.

“I am deeply honored to be afforded the opportunity to lead the Jazz Arts program at MSM,” says Dr. Saltzman. “Over the course of more than 40 years, our program has forged a vibrant legacy and tradition. I am looking forward to collaborating with the students, faculty, and administration as we continue bringing a high level of excellence, creativity, and artistry into the next phase of this program.”

“Throughout the search process, Dean Saltzman demonstrated a high level of passion for the mission of MSM and the importance of ensuring that a Jazz Arts education continues to evolve to address the demands and changes within the performing arts industry,” says Executive Vice President and Provost Joyce Griggs. “His impressive commitment to fostering a supportive and inclusive environment and building upon the rich history of MSM’s Jazz Arts program makes him uniquely qualified to lead by example and support our students as they pursue their artistic development.”

For further information, please contact:

Jeff Breithaupt, Vice President for Marketing, Communications, and Alumni Affairs

jbreithaupt@msmnyc.edu
(917) 493-4702.

ABOUT JIM SALTZMAN

“If anything, Saltzman’s compositions are all about confronting hidden intentions with blatant honesty. Honesty must be the best policy, because Hidden Intentions is as honest as you’re ever going to find. In an age where integrity usually runs second to marketability, Jim Saltzman takes the road less traveled. And that makes all the difference.” — J Hunter, All About Jazz.

Armed with a rich harmonic palette, colorful and commanding sound, and diverse compositions, saxophonist, composer, and educator Jim Saltzman has been quietly developing his creative voice in the greater New York City jazz community for over twenty years. Hailed by the Boston Globe as a “postmodern jazz saxophonist” that “plays with passion and intensity” and All Music as a “force to be reckoned with”, Saltzman is ready and determined to document the next journey in his creative process. Saltzman has performed with musicians such as George Coleman, James Moody, Eddie Gomez, Jon Faddis, and many others, as well as various jazz clubs throughout NJ and NYC, including The Blue Note, Smalls, Cecil’s, Shanghai Jazz, and many others. His daily interactions with his colleagues in the jazz community today are inspiring, exciting, influential, and have provided him with some of his favorite experiences.

As a composer, Saltzman loves to explore the possibilities of color within the large jazz ensemble.

Despite being extraordinarily color blind, he views the orchestration colors created while composing to be a vital element of his music. Often cinematic, he strives to write thought-provoking music that shows respect for the jazz tradition, simultaneously looking to create honest, sincere music for large jazz ensembles. Jim was a member of the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop from 2009-2011 and was awarded the 2011 BMI Foundation Charlie Parker Composition Prize for his composition, Road to Zion. His Manny Albam Commission work Multiple Personality Disorder was premiered at the 24th annual BMI Jazz Composers Workshop concert, and his most recent CD of original compositions, Hidden Intentions, was released in April 2007 on Jazz Excursion Records. The album was chosen as one of the “Top Ten Jazz CDs of 2007” by the Boston Globe and was also listed in the “Critics’ Picks, Top Jazz CDs of 2007” by Jazz Times. Jim has also recorded two additional CDs, Along the Way (2000), and Aggregate (2003).

As an emerging scholar, Jim has done extensive research in the field of jazz history. His doctoral research was on the influence of Maurice Ravel’s Valse Nobles et Sentimentales on jazz composer Billy Strayhorn. His substantial master’s thesis, “Stylistic Aspects in the Improvisations of Tenor Saxophonist Warne Marsh,” examines the relationship between Warne Marsh, Lee Konitz, and Lennie Tristano. Jim was the music curator for Fascinating Rhythms: Music of the Jazz Age for the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum’s The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s” exhibition (April 7 – August 20, 2017).

A passionate and dedicated educator who has been on the Manhattan School of Music (MSM) Jazz Arts faculty since 2105 (and the MSM Precollege faculty since 2011), Jim believes that it is vital for musicians to continue the tradition while simultaneously looking forward towards the future. He is the incoming Dean of Jazz Arts at MSM and lives in New Jersey with his wife, two children, and dog. When not performing, composing, practicing, or teaching music, he can be found long-distance running, hiking in the woods, and saving seeds for his vegetable garden.

ABOUT MSM JAZZ ARTS: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Manhattan School of Music’s degree program in jazz celebrated its 40th anniversary during the 2024–25 academic year. The following essay provides a brief historical perspective.

Manhattan School of Music instituted its first jazz degree program in 1984: a Master of Music in Jazz/Commercial Music Studies. This was followed by a bachelor’s program in 1987, and the Doctor of Musical Arts in Jazz Arts Advancement (with a unique emphasis on composition, performance, and pedagogy) began in Fall 2003. Heads of the department have included Dick Lowenthal, Justin DiCioccio, Stefon Harris (BM ’95, MM ’97), Ingrid Jensen, and – beginning in July 2025 – incoming Dean Jim Saltzman.

From the start, the new program garnered attention from high-level prospective students, as well as from industry professionals, critics, and the media: the first graduating class in 1985 included Rich De Rosa, Kai Fikenscher, Ted Piltzecker, John Riley, Chris Rosenberg, Richard Sussman, and Roland Vasquez; Tim Page declared in The New York Times that MSM “offers New York’s strongest training in contemporary music and jazz” (November 9, 1986); and MSM’s first commercially available jazz recording, Shades of Time, won DownBeat magazine’s award for Best Jazz Big Band (College Division) in 1988.

Called Jazz Arts since 2002, the School’s recognition of the art form has roots in previous course offerings and ensembles dating from the 1970s. The School’s first official jazz ensemble, the Manhattan Stage Band gave its premiere public performance in February 1971, having been established in Fall 1970. A concert in 1973 by MSM’s Contemporary Jazz Ensemble, directed by Valerie Capers, honored jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie, who performed his piece Manteca with the students. Other artists visiting the School during this time included Milt Hinton, Dick Hyman, Marian McPartland, and Bobby Rosengarden. MSM added a formal Jazz Studies department and faculty for the first time in its 1977–78 curriculum, prior to the announcement of Jazz as a major seven years later.

As early as 1963, President John Brownlee was announcing the intent to add Jazz to the MSM curriculum, as part of his ambitious “New Manhattan Project” to expand offerings and relocate the East Harlem campus to the west side. A benefit concert for this initiative at Carnegie Hall on April 27, 1967, featured the Modern Jazz Quartet led by alumnus and MSM Trustee John Lewis (BM ’52, MM ’53, HonDMA ’96), MJQ’s pianist and founder (their performance was later released by Atlantic Records on the album Blues at Carnegie Hall).

Lewis was one of several musicians in the 1950s who wished to study classical music at MSM, and who would later become jazz genre luminaries – including alumni Max Roach, Ron Carter, Joe Wilder, Hugh Masekela, Julius Watkins, Art Davis, Robert “Brother Ah” Northern, Dick Katz, and Donald Byrd. Even Herbie Hancock (HonDMA ’23) enrolled to study with composer Vittorio Giannini in 1961, while Yusef Lateef attended in the late 1960s, first as an undergraduate classical flute major, then earning a master’s in music education.

MSM celebrates 40 years of a jazz degree program and acknowledges that since the 1950s, MSM has been home to jazz musicians who have shaped and influenced the world of jazz. As outgoing Jazz Arts Dean Ingrid Jensen has said, “[This is] one of the most prestigious jazz departments in the world with the most incredible faculty anyone could ever dream of [and] the most brilliant lights on the current and future music scene in the form of our wonderful student body.”

—John K. Blanchard (Class of 1989), Institutional Historian and Director of Archives

ABOUT MANHATTAN SCHOOL OF MUSIC

Founded as a community music school by Janet Daniels Schenck in 1918, today Manhattan School of Music (MSM) is recognized for its more than 1,025 superbly talented undergraduate and graduate students who come from 54 countries and nearly all 50 states; its innovative curricula and world-renowned artist-teacher faculty that includes musicians from the New York Philharmonic, the Met Orchestra, and the top ranks of the jazz and Broadway communities; and a distinguished community of accomplished, award-winning alumni working at the highest levels of the musical, educational, cultural, and professional worlds.

The School is dedicated to the personal, artistic, and intellectual development of aspiring musicians, from its Precollege students through those pursuing doctoral studies. Offering classical, jazz, and musical theatre training, MSM grants a range of undergraduate and graduate degrees. True to MSM’s origins as a music school for children, the Precollege Division is a professionally oriented Saturday music program dedicated to the musical and personal growth of talented young musicians ages 8 to 18. The School also serves some 2,000 New York City schoolchildren through its Arts-in-Education Program, and another 2,000 students through its critically acclaimed Distance Learning Program.

MSM LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Manhattan School of Music acknowledges that we gather on the traditional land of the Lenape and Wappinger past and present, and honor with gratitude the land itself and the people who have stewarded it throughout the generations. This calls us to commit to continuing to learn how to be better stewards of the land we inhabit as well.