Jason Crafton

Jason Crafton is associate professor of trumpet and music faculty chair at Virginia Tech. He has performed as soloist and chamber musician in China, Greece, and across the United States. He is a member of the Charlottesville Opera Orchestra and has performed with the Dallas Opera, the Des Moines Metropolitan Opera, and the Dallas Wind Symphony. He can be heard on numerous recordings on the Mark and GIA labels, including over a dozen releases by the North Texas Wind Symphony and four volumes of Teaching Music Through Performance in Band. 

Crafton is a founding member of the electro acoustic chamber music group Fifth Bridge. Recent and future engagements include a collaboration with Henry Winter from the Harvard/Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and composer John Hollenbeck, as well as premieres of new works by David Sampson and Christopher Stark. Also, in demand as a teacher and pedagogue, Crafton has presented clinics at the International Trumpet Guild Convention, the University of Kentucky Summer Trumpet Institute, the Trumpet Festival of the Southeast, and at over a dozen major universities. Additionally, his writings on instrumental and brass pedagogy have been published in the Journal of the International Trumpet Guild, the Journal of the National Association of Collegiate Wind and Percussion Instructors, and Teaching Music Through Performance in Jazz. 

Crafton holds degrees from Drake University and the University of Northern Colorado, in addition to a doctorate from the University of North Texas. His teachers include Robert Murray, Keith Johnson, and Andrew Classen. He has undertaken additional study with Vincent DiMartino, James Thompson, Vincent Cichowicz, Adam Gordon, and John Holt.