John Blair - Composer in Charge

Multi-faceted musician, John Blair has composed original music for a variety of projects including opera, jazz orchestra, string quartet, wind ensemble and other significant chamber permutations and contingents. 

An alumnus of the BMI's Jazz Composers’ and Film Composers’ Workshops as well as the John Duffy Institute for New Opera, Influential teachers include Chen Yi, Zhou Long, and Donald Erb.

His compositions have been performed at the Jazz Composers’ Symposium - USF (COSMIC RESIDUE), in NY at the Anthology Film Archives (Should've Kissed ), and the International Clarinet Symposium John Bruce Yeh Master Class (Adagio for Clarinet). He also worked with Gershon Kingsley on the opera, Raoul, based on the life of Raoul Wallenberg (libretto by Michael Kunze).

His work has included composing, performing and arranging music for Should’ve Kissed  (d. Jinoh Park).  Red Ice, The Red Goodnight, and Pastor Shepherd starring Danny Trejo. Currently working on Wings Over Iberia (in pre-production). John has taught at Butler University, Montgomery College and Sam Houston State University and has taught Logic Pro for Apple.

While working for Apple, John implemented a weekly Music Technology course utilizing Logic Pro. One very successful event that he programmed was titled Film Scoring Technology, featuring award winning music editor, Todd Kasow (The Red Violin, True Grit, No Country for Old Men) and Teese Gohl (Spiderman on Broadway and Across the Universe). This event involved scoring live to picture using a scene from the Coen Brothers' film, True Grit. John was instrumental in organizing this event. He created Logic Pro Orchestral templates, networked several computers and synthesizers as well as secured an endorsement from Vienna Symphonic and Score Cloud, two music technology/software companies. (his cue was the best!)

John has performed at  the Lionel Hampton and North Texas Jazz Festivals. Other notable venues include: the Wortham Center (Houston), The Blue Room (Kansas City), the Slipper Room, Brooklyn Lyceum, and Rockwood Music Hall in New York City. He has performed with Bill Watrous, Al Grey, Bobby Watson, Sir John Dankworth and Dennis Dotson.  John provided a vocal arrangement of the Strayhorn gem, My Little Brown Book, for Kevin Mahogany.