Ellen Rowe, jazz pianist and composer, is currently Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation at the University of Michigan. She is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, where she studied with Rayburn Wright and Bill Dobbins. Prior to her appointment in Michigan, she served as Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Connecticut.

Winner of the Hartford, CT Advocate Readers’ Poll for Best Acoustic Jazz, Ms. Rowe has performed at jazz clubs and on concert series throughout the U.S., as well as touring in Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Ireland, Poland, and Australia. Also active as a clinician, she has given workshops and master classes at the Melbourne Conservatory, Hochshule fur Musik in Cologne, and the Royal Academy of Music in London, in addition to many appearances as a guest artist at festivals and Universities around the country.

When not leading her own quartet, she is in demand as a sideman, having performed with a wide variety of jazz artists including Kenny Wheeler, Tim Ries, Tom Harrell, John Clayton, Ingrid Jensen, and Steve Turre.  She has also been a guest on two installments of Marian McPartland’s  “Piano Jazz” on National Public Radio, most recently in March of 2003.  Her two CDs as a leader, Sylvan Way (2000) and Denali Pass (2005) have received extensive airplay and critical acclaim.  Her latest CD Wishing Well will be released in the fall of 2009.

Ms. Rowe's compositions and arrangements have been performed and recorded by jazz ensembles and orchestras around the world, including the Village Vanguard Orchestra, BBC Jazz Orchestra, U.S. Navy Commodores, Berlin and NDR Radio Jazz Orchestras, London Symphony, DIVA, and the Perth Jazz Orchestra.  Many of these works can be heard on recently released CD’s including Leave It To Diva, The Perth Jazz Orchestra, Bingo (The Bird of Paradise Orchestra) and I Believe In You (DIVA). She has recently been a composer-in-residence at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  Her big band compositions are currently published by Sierra Music Publications.

Having been selected to conduct the MENC All-Eastern and All-Northwest Jazz Ensembles as well as All-State jazz ensembles throughout the country, Rowe has also been an invited clinician at the Music Educators National Conference Eastern Division Convention and the International Association of Jazz Educators Convention. Her quartet was recently featured in performance at the 2005 IAJE Conference in Long Beach, California and the 2009 Detroit International Jazz festival.