SeanDobbins

Drummer Sean Dobbins is Professor of Music (Jazz Studies) at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he leads the jazz drumset studio.

A product of the Ann Arbor Public Schools, he got his start as a sought-after Detroit-area jazz sideman at a young age, playing regularly with Blue Note artist Louis Smith, the Ann Arbor band teacher who impressed the importance of a good education on him early. As his career progressed he became the recipient of numerous awards and accolades, including the Woody Herman Jazz Award for outstanding musicianship and the Louis Armstrong Scholarship. As both a player and an educator he has been the focus of countless news articles, jazz radio programs, and documentaries.

Though still young by jazz standards, Dobbins has amassed an impressive list of playing companions, from Benny Golson, Dr. Lonnie Smith, and Barry Harris to Jon Hendricks, Mose Allison, and Joey DeFrancesco. His sound can best be described as hard-driving, solid rhythm with refreshing melodic sensibility, with influences that run from Art Blakey, Jeff Hamilton, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Ed Thigpen, and Sonny Payne to Detroit-area greats Gerald Cleaver and the one and only Elvin Jones.

He has stayed devoted to education throughout his life. In 1999 he was asked to direct the Ann Arbor Public Schools Summer Jazz Program, which a year earlier had been in danger of cancellation for low enrollment; a year after he took over, enrollment had more than tripled, and a year after that the group was featured on WEMU. Before joining the Jacobs faculty he served as director of jazz studies at Oakland University and jazz program director at Community Music School–Detroit, taught at the University of Michigan and Wayne State University, and served as Artistic Director of Jazz Ensembles for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and as Executive and Artistic Director of the Southeastern Michigan Jazz Association.

As a father of three, Dobbins knows, understands, and accepts the challenge of continuing the art form through clinics, masterclasses, and concerts for up-and-coming musicians, and he makes a point of building educational opportunities into every road trip. That work has a name now: The Barbershop.