Bill Dobbins is Professor Emeritus of jazz studies at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. where he taught jazz piano, improvisation, and jazz composition from 1973 to 1994, and jazz composing and arranging courses while directing the award-winning Eastman Jazz Ensemble and Eastman Studio Orchestra from 2002 to 2022. His students have been heard in the big bands of Count Basie, Woody Herman, Buddy Rich, Maynard Ferguson, Thad Jones/Mel Lewis, Chuck Mangione, Maria Schneider, and Bob Brookmeyer, Bill Holman, and Maria Schneider. As a pianist, he performed with orchestra and chamber ensembles under the direction of Louis Lane, Pierre Boulez, Lukas Foss and Frederick Fennell, and he has performed and recorded with jazz artists such as Clark Terry, Al Cohn, Red Mitchell, Phil Woods, James Moody, Dave Liebman, John Goldsby, and Peter Erskine. From 1994 through 2002 he was principal director of the WDR Big Band in Cologne, Germany, and he headed the jazz studies department at the Cologne Musical Academy from 1998 to 2002. Concert, radio, television, and tour projects under his direction with the WDR Big Band featured Clark Terry, Dave Liebman, Randy Brecker, Jimmy Knepper, Kevin Mahogany, Art Farmer, Steve Lacy, Paquito D’Rivera, Claire Fischer, Peter Erskine, and the Kings Singers. He continues to collaborate with the WDR Big Band and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra. Schott Music (Germany) distributes his compositions and arrangements for big band, chamber music combinations, and solo piano, as well as Jazz piano transcriptions and textbooks (originally published by Advance Music). These include Jazz Arranging and Composing: A Linear Approach, A Creative Approach to Jazz Piano Harmony, Composing and Arranging for the Contemporary Big Band, Sonata for Soprano Saxophone and Piano, Preludes (Volumes 1-4), and a DVD, The Evolution of Solo Jazz Piano. He retired from the Eastman School in 2022. His solo piano CDs, Composers series, Volume 1 (The music of George Gershwin and Clare Fischer) and Volume 2 (The music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn) were listed among Downbeat magazine’s Best Albums of 2016. Recent CDs of his arrangements include Ariabesques – The WDR Big Band Plays Bach: The Goldberg Variations (Jazzline, 2023) and Eric Alexander’s A New Beginning (HighNote, 2023).