Jazz Jottings June 2026

David Robinson has had an impressive and productive career spanning over 50 years as a performing musician and educator while making significant contributions to the promotion and perpetuation of traditional jazz. He was recently recognized as a 2026 “Jazz Hero” by the Jazz Journalists Association. The Award was presented to Dave last month by Willard Jenkins, a founder of JJA, at Blues Alley, the nation’s oldest continuing jazz supper club located in historic Georgetown, D.C.

The son of a piano teacher and writer for National Geographic Books, Dave Robinson grew up in an 18th century farmhouse in Virginia. He recalled listening to records from his father’s collection at about age five and becoming enthralled by the likes of trombonist Walter “Pee Wee” Hunt and Joe “Fingers” Carr. He was soon introduced to Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton and the Dukes of Dixieland and declared “I was hooked!”

He took up the trumpet and while still young, he organized a small-folks Tijuana Brass band. He played in all his secondary school bands, including a trad jazz group he formed in high school called the Herndon High Gang. He went on to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where he majored in philosophy with a concentration in music, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1976. While at UNC, he formed a group from within the pep band called the Stickyfoot Stompers, which provided the halftime entertainment at UNC home basketball games, and joined an existing band on campus called the Incredible Dixieland Jazz Band.

His first job after college was selling stereos, but the bulk of his business career was in the IT industry, specifically contracts management, managing contracts that ran as high as two billion dollars. He retired in 2014.

Busy Musician

Playing the trumpet, cornet and bass trumpet, Dave has performed and toured with the top DC-area traditional and swing bands, including the Storyville Seven (leader), Sheiks of Dixie, Sunshine Skiffle Band, Manassas Festival Jazzers, Pontchartrain Causeway New Orleans Jazz Band, Royal Blue Orchestra, Doc Scantlin’s Imperial Palms Orchestra, New Columbia Swing Orchestra, Radio King Orchestra, SingCo Rhythm Orchestra, and Hal’s Bayou Jazz Band.

He currently leads the Conservatory Classic Jazz Band that was formed in 2003 to present the sounds of traditional jazz to Washington, DC audiences. The band’s home base is Alfio’s La Trattoria Restaurant in Chevy Chase, Maryland where it can be heard one Sunday afternoon a month.

Dave has gigged with such swing era veterans as Maxine Sullivan, Billy Butterfield and Bob Haggart and performed at the White House, The Capitol, Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian, New York’s Rainbow Room, New Orleans’s Preservation Hall, Baltimore’s Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, and Blues Alley.

He has toured the Pacific Northwest with the Boilermakers Jazz Band and has been heard at the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee, on National Public Radio, and in various film soundtracks. He performed at a royal wedding ball in London; the Culinary Olympics in Frankfurt, Germany; appeared on-camera in NBC-TV’s hit show The West Wing; was a finalist in the State Department’s national Jazz Ambassadors competition; and was an Artist-in-Residence at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage.

He was Adjunct Professor of Music at George Mason University, where he directed the Mason Traditional Jazz Ensemble. He has also served as a jazz instructor at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland (the fifth oldest college in the United States, chartered in 1782) and has lectured and conducted jazz workshops extensively throughout the United States.

Mentored Youth Band

Since 1988, Dave has directed the award-winning Capital Focus Jazz Band youth ensemble, which has performed across the U.S. and in Canada, France, England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, and the Caribbean. Among its graduates from the past 38 years who have gone on to successful professional careers are Peter and Will Anderson, Matt Musselman, Ricky Alexander, Geoff Gallante, vocalist Lena Seikaly and ragtimer Adam Yarian.

In the 1990s, he served two terms as president of the American Federation of Jazz Societies, a non-profit organization that fostered mutual support among jazz societies by managing a network for sharing information, resources and techniques. During his tenure, AFJS published a series of “How to” manuals and offered experienced jazz education teams to help member societies in setting up education programs.

Trad Jazz Advocate

Dave Robinson had long been the leading advocate in promoting the concept that traditional jazz should be a vital part of jazz studies curriculums in middle schools through college. Explaining how he took up the cause: “I’ve studied traditional jazz in great depth and felt I could do something about it because of my background as a musician, teacher and lecturer. Traditional jazz is not merely a historical footnote. It is a living breathing art form that has a history of over 100 years, yet has slipped off the radar screens of many jazz educators.”

He continued: “While scholastic jazz education programs are widespread, there has not been a formalized curriculum for the teaching of New Orleans-derived styles. The Traditional Jazz Curriculum Kit we developed acquaints students with the music of Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Bix Beiderbecke, Jack Teagarden, Bunk Johnson, George Lewis, Lu Watters, Turk Murphy, Eddie Condon and later exponents of traditional jazz, including the top traditional jazz artists of today.”

Trad Jazz Kit

A $40,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts obtained through the Jazz Education Network (JEN) provided the impetus to facilitate production and distribution of the Kit to 10,000 schools and colleges. The Kit contained lesson plans, music arrangements, transcriptions and lead sheets, audio tracks, instructional videos, resources and jazz style guides and a poster. The curriculum package (which is currently available on-line) was designed to augment existing scholastic music programs and supported the National Standards for Music Education as well as Common Core Standards.

Dave Robinson is a past president of the Potomac River Jazz Club and The Mainstay music venue in Rock Hall, Maryland and has produced the Smithsonian’s Jazz Concert Series. He helped to launch the Traditional Jazz Youth Band Festival in Sacramento, where he served annually as clinician, lecturer and adjudicator and has also been on the faculties of the STJS Trad Jazz Youth Camp in the Sierra Nevada mountains, the National Jazz Workshop at Shenandoah University, and Traditions Week at McDaniel College, as well as on the mentor teams of the Jazz Education Network and the National Association for Music Education.

Dave hosted The French Quarter on Sirius XM Satellite Radio for three years, drawn from his huge archive of 25,000 trad jazz recordings, and currently hosts Jazz Gumbo on WKHS-FM.

Accolades from Scott

In acknowledging his older brother’s selection as a 2026 Jazz Hero, Scott Robinson noted: “Long ago Dave complained that most jazz education seemed to begin (and sometimes ended) with Charlie Parker. Now Dave is no prude when it comes to this music. He has great respect for the masters across all the decades of this art form. But he believes that respect ought to begin with the music of Jelly Roll Morton, Earl Hines, Louis Armstrong, and early Ellington.

“So he created a youth band to draw talented young players from around the DC area and immerse them in the experience of learning and performing traditional jazz music. He provided instruments for them, paid them to rehearse and record, and took them around the world to perform. And he’s been quietly doing this for nearly 40 years. Today I find myself on NYC bandstands next to alumni of his Capital Focus Jazz Band, marveling at their playing, and what Dave has accomplished.

“But only reaching DC-area kids wasn’t enough for Dave, so he drummed up funding and released his Traditional Jazz Curriculum Kit (a long-held goal to provide others with an entry point for learning about this music) and distributed it to 10,000 music educators across the country—for free! Dave has never been one to call attention to himself—he will gladly labor in obscurity—but he will call attention, whenever and wherever possible, to the music he serves so well and loves so dearly. Seeing this music gain greater attention and respect is his reward. I am thrilled beyond measure to see him finally granted a smidgeon of recognition for the work that he has performed so selflessly for all these many decades. Jazz Hero? You bet!”

Read about Dave Robinson’s Jazz Hero award at jjajazzawards.org/2026-jazz-hero-dave-robinson and about Dave’s involvement with the Capital Focus Jazz Band here: www.capitalfocusjazzband.com.