Guest ArtistsJeff Nevin, trumpet

Jeff Nevin, Ph.D., is a professional classical trumpet player, mariachi trumpeter and soloist, a conductor specializing in the interpretation of Mexican music, and an award-winning composer whose works have been performed by the San Diego Symphony and other orchestras of the western U.S. as well as Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán and Sol de México. Together with Mariachi Champaña Nevin, he has established a reputation for presenting the highest quality classical and mariachi music performed with the mariachi alone, soloing with symphony orchestras, and appearing with world-renowned singers including Placido Domingo, Aida Cuevas, Fernando de la Mora, Jorge Lopez-Yañez, José Luíz Duval, Mónica Ábrego, Florencia Tinoco, Rafael Jorge Negrete and others. In addition to numerous performances in the US and Mexico, he recently returned from performing tours in France (2010, 2012), China (2010), and Russia (2009, 2012), Brazil (2014), Canada (2015), India (2015) and Germany and the Czech Republic (2016).

Dr. Nevin earned his Bachelor’s, Master’s and Ph.D. in Music Theory and Composition from the University of Illinois, Arizona State University and UC San Diego respectively. He is currently Professor of Music and Director of Mariachi Activities at Southwestern College in Chula Vista, CA, where he devised and is now offering the world’s first college degree in mariachi music. He is also the conductor of the Southwestern College Symphony Orchestra. He was a Faculty Associate at Arizona State University in the 2012-13 school year. In 2011 the Mexican government presented him with the first “Award for Arts and Culture” for his work promoting Mexican music abroad. In 2008 he was named “California Multicultural Music Educator of the Year” and accepted the position of Director of Youth Music Programs for San Bernardino’s Sinfonía Mexicana.

In addition to countless television, radio and print interviews, Dr. Nevin has been featured in the documentary films In the Name of Mariachi Music, Viva el Mariachi and The History Channel en Español’s El Mariachi. His first book, Virtuoso Mariachi (University Press of America, 2002), was called “a major milestone in the history of mariachi music” by the Tucson Citizen newspaper, and he has written a comprehensive set of method books, Mariachi Mastery (Neil A Kjos Music Company, 2006), that is used to teach mariachi music in classrooms across the United States and Mexico. He is a founding member of the Mariachi Scholarship Foundation and has served as its President since 2013.