Isrea Butler

Dr. Isrea Butler holds degrees in trombone performance from the Eastman School of Music (BM and MM) and Rutgers University (DMA). His teachers include John Marcellus, Ralph Sauer, George Roberts, Michael Powell, Weston Sprott, Conrad Herwig, Bruce Paulson and Clay Jenkins. Dr. Butler is currently the Music Department Chair at North Carolina Central University in Durham, NC. Previously he was Director of Bands and Brass at The University of Maryland Eastern Shore. He was Director of Jazz Studies and Low Brass at the University of Mary, and was Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Jackson State University from 2012-2013, where he taught trombone and conducted the University Brass Ensemble, The award-wining Jazz Combo I and taught Graduate Music History. He has also taught at the Eastman School of Music, Juilliard’s MAP and Rutgers University. His students have gone on to perform, teach and study at graduate school at Berklee, UNI, Montclair to name a few.

As a conductor Dr. Butler has been the Associate Conductor of the Brighton Symphony and Eastman Trombone Choir and Brass Guild. He studied conducting with Brad Lubman, William Weinert and Kynan Johns. While in NYC he was a frequent performer on numerous Broadway shows and many other prestigious musical performances. He has toured, recorded and performed with many of the country’s leading jazz orchestras including Cab Calloway, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Mingus Big Band, Glenn Miller, Birdland Big Band and Jimmy Heath. Orchestra. Also at home playing classical music he has performed with the Orchestra of St. Lukes, Rochester Philharmonic, Buffalo Philharmonic, New York String Seminar Orchestra and the One World Philharmonic.