The Great American Jazz Story

Jimmy teaches Jazz at U.D. Armed with his sweet horn and, if we're lucky, his singing voice, he will teach and entertain us about the world of American Jazz, one of USA's unique contributions to the world of music. Don't miss this one!

Jimmy has a deep history with Rotary. During his first job teaching public school music in grades 1-12 in the late 1980s, he was a member of the Eureka Springs (AR) Rotary Club in District 611 and also served as its president and co-chair of the 1990 district convention. Needless to say, that club did a lot of singing of Rotary songs. For two years recently, he was a member of the Dayton Rotary Club (which does not sing and doesn’t want to).

Born and raised in Oklahoma with parents as musicians, Jimmy was surrounded by music from birth. His father was a singer and church choir director; his mother was a singer and pianist and organist who taught piano students after school every week day. Jimmy’s two brothers and sister all played in band and sang in choirs. After singing in church and school choirs and taking piano lessons through the fifth grade, he began trumpet in the sixth grade. During high school, Jimmy was in band, orchestra, choir and studied private trumpet, voice, piano, and organ and this mostly continued through his undergraduate and graduate degrees in music.

Jimmy's teaching assignments have included rural Arkansas public schools, colleges in Oklahoma, Michigan, Kansas, North Dakota and Harvard University where he received three teaching awards as a graduate assistant in jazz history, music theory, and music history. Jimmy’s performance have included classical, jazz, pop, and early music with performances with Johnny Mathis, Shirley Jones, Disney World, Opryland, and Boston Lyric Opera. While in Boston, he performed the national anthem for the Red Sox with the Boston Symphony Orchestra with John Williams conducting. He also soloed on the national anthem for another Red Sox game against Texas. 

Jimmy has been at UD for five years where he has taught various courses in ear training, jazz, and pedagogy. He performs with two UD faculty groups: the brass quintet and the jazztet. The Jimmy Leach Jazztet has performed at the Dayton Art Institute, the Wright Memorial Library, David’s Church, St. Paul’s Episcopal, and the Levitt Pavilion, where he’ll be next Friday July 22 and tomorrow night at the Art Institute. He recently became the music director and organist at Madison Avenue Christian Church in Covington, Kentucky.