Jim Ketch is Professor Emeritus of Music and past director of jazz studies for the Department of Music, the UNC-Chapel Hill. He retired on July 1, 2020 having spent 43 years teaching trumpet, directing the UNC Jazz Band and Jazz Combos, and teaching classroom courses in jazz history and improvisation. He has conducted all-state and regional honors jazz bands in North and South Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, and Tennessee. He was the recipient of four teaching awards during his tenure at UNC-CH and spent three years as chair of the Department of Music. At his retirement, Ketch was presented with a plaque issued by North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, inducting him into the Order of the Long Leaf Pine.
A versatile trumpeter, Ketch has recorded four CDs on the Summit and Crystal Records label. He serves as trumpeter and/or music director on three recordings of the North Carolina Jazz Repertory Orchestra and four recordings of the UNC Jazz Band. Additional recording projects have included dates with the Mint Julep Jazz Band, the Gregg Gelb Swing Band, the Piedmont Wind Symphony, and on the jazz CD Carolina Tracks. He has performed and or conducted across the United States and in England, France, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. He has shared the stage with numerous jazz and classical artists including Branford Marsalis, Marcus Roberts, Rene Marie, Manhattan Transfer, Aretha Franklin, the Temptations, the Four Tops, John Pizzarelli, William Warfield, Robert Shaw, the Summit Brass, and the North Carolina Symphony.
Ketch served with Marcus Roberts for 15 years as associate director of Swing Central Jazz for the Savannah Music Festival. He is the founder of the Carolina Jazz Festival (1977) which has collaborated for 18 years with Jazz at Lincoln Center to offer the annual North Carolina Regional Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Festival. Ketch continues to serve (for more than 20 years) on the faculty of the Jamey Aebersold Summer Jazz Workshop in Louisville, KY.
Gabriel Sánchez Porras joined the Department of Music faculty in July 2022, and is assistant professor of music, saxophone instructor, and director of Big Band and Saxophone Ensemble. He is completing a doctorate in saxophone performance and pedagogy at the University of Iowa with Kenneth Tse. His Bachelor of Music is from the National Institute of Music of Costa Rica; his Master of Music is from Ball State University (Muncie, IN). Primary saxophone instructors include Kenneth Tse, Nathan Bogert and Harold Guillén.
Sánchez Porras has performed in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia, Guatemala, Cuba, France, Switzerland and the United States, including music festivals such as the Festival Nacional de las Artes (Costa Rica); Festival Internacional de las Artes (Costa Rica); Cosquín Rock; Montreux Jazz Festival; North American Saxophone Conference; Sax Fest Costa Rica; Alianza Latinoamericana de Saxofón (ALASAX); Encuentro Universitario Internacional De Saxofón México; Santa Catarina Music Festival; and Oficina de Música de Curitiba. He has performed and competed in a number of saxophone festivals in Latin America: third prize in the 2017 ALASAX Classic Saxophone Competition (Cali, Colombia); and second prize in the 2019 Yucatán Pan-American Classical Saxophone Competition (Mexico).
In Costa Rica, Sánchez Porras performed with groups including the National Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonic Orchestra, the Youth Symphony Orchestra, the Cartago Municipal Orchestra and the San José Concert Band. He was also part of the jazz and popular music scene and played with La Big Band de Costa Rica, New Jazz Project, Isla Tambor and Un Rojo Reggae Band, sharing the stage with well-known artists such as Armando Manzanero, Debi Nova, Ismael Serrano and Joaquin Yglesias.