Bio

Brian Felix is Professor and Chair of the Music Department at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, where he teaches classes on jazz theory and improvisation, jazz history, keyboard skills, music business, the Beatles and the Grateful Dead. Felix holds a B.A. in Music from Rutgers College, a M.M. in Jazz Performance from DePaul University and a D.M.A. in Jazz Performance from the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. His research interests include jazz and improvised musics, the Grateful Dead and the Beatles. His work has been published in the Jazz Perspectives, Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, and he is the co-author of Interactive Listening: A New Approach to Music. Felix is also a professional keyboardist—he was co-leader of OM Trio, an acclaimed jazz-rock group that toured internationally between 1999-2004.  He continues to perform regularly in the Asheville, NC area with his organ jazz group Fly Casual, the electric Herbie Hancock tribute group Flood and other various projects.