Teachers and Staff | Steve Sharp

Steve Sharp’s career in jazz has covered a wide range of musical responsibilities and accomplishments, representing a high level of activity across jazz pedagogy, jazz performance, jazz composition, and commercial music.

As a performer, Sharp remains active across jazz and commercial music. He currently performs as lead trumpet in the award-winning Eastman Jazz Ensemble and the Eastman Studio Orchestra, and has performed with The Temptations, The Four Tops, The Glenn Miller Orchestra, Louis Prima Jr. & The Witnesses, The (Cherry Poppin’) Daddies, Byron Stripling, The Eugene Symphony Orchestra, and the Paperboys.

As a composer-arranger, Sharp’s compositions have been performed across the USA and Europe, and featured Sharp as well as trumpeters Ingrid Jensen and Tony Glausi. He has also written for the Eastman Jazz Ensemble and for an upcoming album from Louis Prima Jr. & The Witnesses, recorded at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles. In 2017, Sharp completed seven big-band arrangements for a Ballet Fantastique (OR) production of “Babes in Toyland,” which he conducted for three sold-out performances – and by popular demand, three sold-out performances the following year. Sharp also premiered six big band arrangements for his second doctoral recital in 2024.

As an educator, Sharp maintains interests across jazz, popular, and classical music. He regularly teaches courses in rock & roll or jazz history, jazz theory or arranging, music theory or counterpoint, concert bands, jazz ensembles, and lessons in trumpet, piano, or composition. His research deals with Impressionistic harmony in jazz, selected synthetic scales of Persichetti, big band history, Fanny Hensel (Mendelssohn) and Romanticism, harmony of Richard Strauss, and Steve Larson’s “musical forces” applied to jazz improvisation.

Sharp attended the University of Kansas, where he earned dual bachelor’s degrees in trumpet and music theory. He earned his master’s degree in jazz composition from the University of Oregon, and is pursuing his Doctor of Musical Arts in jazz trumpet from the Eastman School of Music.