Jeffrey Lindberg

Jeffrey Lindberg is an orchestra conductor, jazz bandleader, transcriptionist, and Professor of Music at The College of Wooster. He earned B.S. and M.S. degrees at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and attended the Vienna Academy of Music in Austria as a Paul Harris Scholar through Rotary. Lindberg was a ConductingFellow at the Aspen Music School in Aspen, Colorado and was pursuing a doctorate at the University of Iowa when he was appointed to The College of Wooster Music Department faculty in 1986.

Professor Lindberg is Music Director of the Wooster Symphony Orchestra and leads the ensemble in the tradition of its founder, Daniel Parmelee. Drawing from standard orchestral literature, showcasing lesser-known composers, and commissioning new works for the WSO, Lindberg produces challenging programming for the students and community members of the orchestra. During histime at Wooster, Lindberg’s skill on the podium and worldwide connections have brought such luminaries as violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, hornist Eric Ruske, and pianist Misha Dichter to solo with the Wooster Symphony Orchestra. Under his baton, the Wooster Symphony Chamber Orchestra performed with soprano Erie Mills at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the Wooster Symphony Orchestra has premiered several new works by contemporary composers. In the fall of 2021, the WSO performed the world premiere of James Kessler’s Women’s Suffrage Suite for Mezzo-soprano and Orchestra with mezzo-soprano Audrey Johnson. The commission was made possible by the Women’s Committee for the Wooster Symphony Orchestra, the Wayne County Community Foundation (The Lillian Steiner Community Fund), the Wayne County Historical Society of Ohio, the 19th Amendment Centennial Committee, and the League of Women Voters of WayneCounty, Ohio.

Professor Lindberg is the co-founder and Artistic Director of the Chicago Jazz Orchestra, the oldest continuously operating professional jazz orchestra in Chicago. The group has made numerous recordings, toured Europe twice, and played for The Kennedy Center Honors Awards Dinner in Washington, D.C. for 26 consecutive years. Guest artists have included Clark Terry, Dizzy Gillespie, Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, Slide Hampton, Quincy Jones, and many others. Professor Lindberg’s professional connections offer jazz students at Wooster unparalleled access to world-class jazz artists. Under his direction, the Wooster Jazz Ensemble has appeared with Butch Miles of the Count Basie Orchestra, Lou Marini of the Original Blues Brothers Band, Joe Williams, Clark Terry, Al Grey, Milt Hinton, Hank Ford, Guy King, Randy Sabien, and many others. Like the Wooster Symphony Orchestra, the Wooster Jazz Ensemble is open to skilled musicians regardless of their major.

Lindberg’s skills as a jazz transcriptionist have produced a vast library of over a thousand titles which have been performed by the Chicago Jazz Orchestra, the Count Basie Orchestra, the Woody Herman Orchestra, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, and hundreds of others. He has been commissioned to transcribe numerous jazz orchestrations for the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra and for artists such as Dave Brubeck and Joe Williams. Two of his transcriptions were performed by the Smithsonian Jazz Orchestra at the WhiteHouse. Lindberg’s transcriptions of the Ellington/Strayhorn jazz versions of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite (nine movements) and Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite (four movements) are published and available through Alfred Publishing, Inc. Each is considered the definitive critical edition of its source material. In 2021, Lindberg was commissioned by Billy Strayhorn Songs, Inc. to produce an accurate transcription of Strayhorn’s Suite for the Duo, a publication now available through Hal Leonard. In 2022, Lindberg was approached by the Art Institute of Chicago to write a descriptive label for the 1938 Arthur Dove painting, “Swing Music (Louis Armstrong).” His writing is now on permanent display with the painting in the Institute’s Arts of the Americas gallery on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

At The College of Wooster, Professor Lindberg directs the Wooster Symphony Orchestra and the Wooster Jazz Ensemble and teaches trombone and jazz history.