Karlton Hester

Hester is the founder and director of the San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Preservation Big Band and Hesterian Musicism. Hester's music involves a synthesis of Afrocentric and Western tonal, modal, quartal, serial, and electronic elements into an expressive voice that defies simple categorization as either premeditated or spontaneous composition. Hester's Ph.D. dissertation is titled "The Melodic and Polyrhythmic Development of John Coltrane's Spontaneous Compositions in a Racist Society," and the music of John Coltrane has been a lasting influence on his work. He coined the term musicism to “represent the creative process by which musicians, visual artists and poets, through the merging of composition and performance, produce new art forms.” This interdisciplinary approach is realized in projects such as “Three Bodies” where Hester collaborated with astrophysicist Greg Laughlin and dancer Ted Warburton to create a multimedia performance that offers a “solution” to the three-body problem. Hester has been the recipient of composer fellowships, grants, and commissions from the National Endowment of the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, New England Council of the Arts, ASCAP, and the William Grant Still Foundation. He served as the vice president of the International Society for Improvised Music (2008-2018) and is founding director of Interdisciplinary Artists Aggregation, Inc. (1970–present). Hester is a Gold Medal winner of a Global Music Award for Experimental Jazz in December 2017, for his 2016 album Trans-Cultural Musicism. Hester is currently the director and member of the principal faculty for the University of California, Santa Cruz Digital Arts and New Media (DANM) MFA program.

Hester earned his B.M. at University of Texas at El Paso, his M.A. in Music Education from San Francisco State University, and his Ph.D. in composition from the City University of New York Graduate Center. He formally studied flute with Harry Nelsova and Paul Renzi, saxophone with Frank Chase and Bill Tremble, composition with Bruce Saylor and Robert Starer, and improvisation with Joe Henderson and John Handy. He began his career as a studio musician and music educator in Los Angeles and would later serve as the Herbert Gussman Director of Jazz Studies at Cornell University from 1990 to 2000. At Cornell, Hester directed the Traditional and Experimental Lab Ensembles and coordinated university festivals and conferences that included a diverse array of “jazz” and African artists including Jaki Byard, John Handy, Joe Henderson, Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Stanley Turrentine, Louis Jordan, Buddy Collette, Dr. Donald Byrd, Dr. Billy Taylor, Randy Weston, Charles Lloyd, Geri Allen, Benny Powell, Charles Tolliver, Steve Turre, Sam Rivers, Thomas Mapfumo, George E. Lewis, Roscoe Mitchell, Hotep Galeta, Victor Goines, Akua Dixon, Mamadou Diabate, Samite Mulondo, Cecilia Smith, Phil Bowler, Adela Dalto, Pamela Wise, and Nick Mathis. As of 2000 Hester directs the "jazz" program at UC Santa Cruz and is a Professor of Music in the Music Department.

Karlton Hester (born February 11, 1949) is an American, performer, composer, scholar, and educator.