Doug Scarborough, the Nancy Bell Evans Associate Professor of Music, leads Whitman’s jazz bands—and an eclectic life outside academia.
For more than a decade, Scarborough’s role at Whitman has fed his soul, providing him a steady stream of talented young musicians to mentor and harmonize with. He directs the Jazz Ensemble 1 and jazz combos. He teaches courses on songwriting, jazz and classical music theory, as well as lessons in trombone and electric bass.
Highlights of recent student performances include a music video that served as the college’s 2022 holiday greeting, featuring the jazz ensemble playing an adapted cover of “Liquid Spirit” by Gregory Porter. And on the stage of Cordiner Hall in the fall of 2022, a small, gifted band of Scarborough’s students welcomed the incoming class and their families with a mashup of the classic and the current: John Lennon’s “Imagine” and Maren Morris’s “Circles Around This Town.”
Their professor couldn’t be more thrilled to let these students shine in the spotlight. “Getting to work with great songs and the positive feedback they get, you can see how it motivates them. They spend so much time practicing, and it just feels good to have their work and talent appreciated.”
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