The Texas Instrument Jazz Band

The Texas Instrument Jazz Band

The Texas Instruments Jazz Band is a full 18-piece big band. The band is organized through the Texins Association (Dallas, Texas) of Texas Instruments. Membership is open to all people eligible for Texins Association membership.
The band is a non-profit organization and all earnings are used to support the operating expenses of the band. The group formed in the summer of 1986, sparked by an ad placed in a TI company newspaper. The band quickly reached a sustainable level and has remained active since its inception.
Openings are filled with Texins Association members when they are available. The band has musicians from numerous organizations across Texas Instruments and Raytheon Systems.
Almost everyone played in high school and college and is glad to have an outlet to continue to study and play jazz. The band rehearses every Tuesday night at Collin College in Plano, Texas from 7:30pm—9:15pm. Kris Berg, Director of Jazz Studies at the college, directs the band.
The group currently owns several hundred charts spanning the range of big band music. The concerts are normally geared more toward performance type events rather than dance band jobs, but the group can cover many types of events. The band performs about a ten times each year. Don’t let the amateur status of the band fool you. The group has performed at Artfest, Montage, The Meyerson Symphony Center, The Starplex Amphitheater, and The Texas Jazz Festival. At a judged festival at Loyola University in New Orleans in 1995, the band walked away with top honors - a superior rating in both performance and sight-reading.
Artists who have performed with the band include Clark Terry, Kurt Elling, Wayne Bergeron, Peter Erskine, Randy Brecker, Delfeayo Marsalis, Gregg Bissonette, Lorraine Feather,  Kevin Mahogany, Frank Mantooth, Blue Lou Marini, Tom Bones Malone, Bobby Militello, Bob Mintzer, Denis DiBlasio, Bobby Shew, Kim Richmond, Clay Jenkins, Terell Stafford, Tim Ries, Scott Whitfield, Chris Vadala, Carol Welsman, Marvin Stamm, Kim Park, Sandra Booker, Leon Breeden, Kathy Kosins, Willie Thomas, and Galen Jeter.  
The band performed at the world renowned Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland in July of 2000. The band has released two CD’s “Jazz Bytes—Version 1.0” (2000) and “AlgoRhythm” (2006).

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