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David Nathaniel Baker Jr. is an American symphonic jazz composer at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington.
Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, David Baker attended Crispus Attucks High School. He was educated at Indiana University, receiving both his Undergraduate and Masters in Music Education from that institution.
He thrived in the Indianapolis jazz scene of the time, serving as a mentor of sorts to Indianapolis-born trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. Originally a talented trombonist, he was forced to abandon that instrument after a jaw injury left him unable to play.
Following the injury, he learned to play cello, a rare instrument in the jazz world. This shift to cello largely ended his career as a performer and marked a period of increased interest in composition and pedagogy. Among the first and most important people to begin to codify the then largely aural tradition of jazz he wrote several seminal books on jazz, including Jazz Improvisation.
As an educator he has helped make Indiana a highly regarded destination for students of music. Probably the best known students to pass under his tutelage are Michael Brecker, Randy Brecker, Peter Erskine, Jim Beard, Chris Botti, Jeff Hamilton, and the jazz-education mogul Jamey Aebersold. A 1973 Pulitzer Prize nominee, Mr. Baker has been nominated for a Grammy Award, honored three times by Down Beat magazine, and has received the National Association of Jazz Educators Hall of Fame Award, President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching from Indiana University, the Arts Midwest Jazz Masters Award, and the Governor’s Arts Award of the State of Indiana. His compositional works are often cited as examples of the Third Stream Jazz movement, although they run the gamut from traditional jazz compositions intended for improvisation, to through-composed symphonic works. He has written over 2,000 compositions.
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