Faculty

A quintessential artist and role model for the next generation of jazz musicians, Gerald Clayton will share his extraordinary talents with USC Thornton students as a 2024-2025 Artist-in-Residence in Jazz.

Six-time Grammy-nominated pianist, composer and band leader Gerald Clayton earned recent Recording Academy recognition for Happening: Live at the Village Vanguard, his debut release on Blue Note Records. Collaborating over the years with such distinctive artists as Diana Krall, Roy Hargrove, Dianne Reeves, Terence Blanchard, John Scofield, Terri Lyne Carrington, Peter Bernstein, Ambrose Akinmusire, Gretchen Parlato, Ben Wendel, the Clayton Brothers Quintet and legendary band leader Charles Lloyd, Clayton currently serves as director of Next Generation Jazz Orchestra following service as musical director for Monterey Jazz Festival On Tour.

Under the instruction of Billy Childs, Clayton earned a Bachelor of Arts in Piano Performance at the USC Thornton School of Music following a year of intensive study with Kenny Barron at The Manhattan School of Music. Clayton’s creative spirit honors the legacy of his father, bassist-composer John Clayton. In 2016, he received a Duke University commission to render the Piedmont Blues experience in early 20th Century Durham; Piedmont Blues features a mixed media performance of critical acclaim. In 2019, he received a commission from LACMA to compose a musical pendant for artist Charles White’s “Five Great American Negroes” mural; Clayton titled the project “White Cities: A Musical Tribute to Charles White.” In January 2020, he began work on the critically acclaimed score for Sam Pollard’s award-winning documentary MLK/FBI. The emotional resonance of Clayton’s score imbues the film with subtle, lingering moments of struggle and humanity, and helps capture a complex arc of an enduring subject.