Dr. Anthony Branker is an Origin Records recording artist and recipient of a 2024 Chamber Music America New Jazz Works Grant with support from the Doris Duke Foundation. He was named in DownBeat magazine’s 62nd and 63rd Annual Critics’ Poll as a “Rising Star Composer” and has recorded 11 projects for both Origin and Sons of Sound Records as a composer/bandleader.

As conductor, he has collaborated with such artists as Terence Blanchard, Clark Terry, Phil Woods, Slide Hampton, Jimmy Heath, Jon Faddis, Ted Curson, Oliver Lake, Frank Foster, Benny Carter, Ralph Bowen, Steve Nelson, Bob Mintzer, Ralph Peterson Jr., Dave Stryker, Abraham Burton, Alex Norris, and Orrin Evans.

Branker was on the faculty at Princeton University for 27 years, where he held an endowed chair in jazz studies and was founding director of the program in jazz studies until his retirement in 2016. He has also served as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar at the Estonian Academy of Music & Theatre and was a member of the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music, Hunter College (CUNY), Ursinus College, and the New Jersey Summer Arts Institute.

Branker’s work as a scholar has been shared at conferences and/or published by the International Society for Music Education (ISME), College Music Society (CMS), International Society for Improvised Music (ISIM), Research in Music Education (RIME), and the International Symposium on Assessment in Music Education (ISAME). He was program scholar for Looking At: Jazz, America’s Art Form, a six-part documentary film viewing and discussion series at the Princeton Public Library in collaboration with the National Endowment for the Humanities, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and the American Library Association.

As a trumpeter, Branker performed and recorded with the Spirit of Life Ensemble – including a five-year residency at New York’s renowned Sweet Basil Jazz Club.