The San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) today announces the appointment of trombonist Steve Davis to its Roots, Jazz, and American Music (RJAM) faculty.

“We are absolutely thrilled to add a talent like Steve Davis to our faculty,” says SFCM Dean and Chief Academic Officer Jonas Wright. “While he is certainly a performer and composer of the highest caliber, I am particularly excited about his long and distinguished teaching career and what that will mean for our students.”

“Steve Davis is one of those rare artists who maintains a unique voice as trombonist, bandleader, and composer/arranger, while also performing with icons of the jazz world such as Art Blakey, Hank Jones, and Chick Corea,” says RJAM Executive Director Simon Rowe. “Having Steve in our midst will be a joy for RJAM students and faculty alike.”

“I'm honored and excited to be joining the RJAM faculty at SFCM next fall,” says Steve Davis. “I've heard great things about the program, its students, and faculty. I've always enjoyed visiting and performing in the San Francisco Bay Area and look forward to getting to know the community and its rich musical history even better.”

Steve Davis is widely regarded as one of today’s leading improvisers on the trombone. Davis has appeared in Downbeat Magazine’s Readers and Critics Polls numerous times, winning the TDWR (Rising Star) Trombone Category in 1998. Davis has also been recently nominated by the Jazz Journalists Association four years in a row (2010-2013) as Trombonist of the Year.

Davis’ most recent recordings, For Real and Gettin’ It Done (Positone), feature his longtime musical colleagues Larry Willis and Nat Reeves along with drummer Billy Williams, saxophonists Abraham Burton (For Real) and Mike DiRubbo, and trumpeter Josh Bruneau (Gettin’ It Done). Davis has led his own groups at such venues as Smoke and Smalls Jazz Clubs in NYC, the Greater Hartford Jazz Festival, Baltimore’s Eubie Blake Center, the Richmond Jazz Society, and Hartford Jazz Society, to name a few recent gigs.

Born in Worcester, MA in 1967, Davis was raised in Binghamton, NY and graduated in 1989 from The Hartt School’s Jackie McLean Institute (University of Hartford, CT). In 1992, Davis joined McLean’s sextet and begin teaching alongside his mentor at both the Hartt School and Artist’s Collective.

Ever in-demand as a sideman, Davis is featured on over 100 recordings. In recent years, “Stevie-D” (a nickname given to him by the late Jackie McLean) has worked regularly with a broad range of jazz icons including Larry Willis’ Quintet, Freddie Hubbard and The New Jazz Composers Octet, Slide Hampton and The Dizzy Gillespie Alumni All-Star Big Band (feat. James Moody, Jimmy Heath, and Roy Hargrove), The Jimmy Heath Big Band, Ron Carter Big Band, Cecil Payne, Horace Silver, and Wynton Marsalis’ Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.