School of Music’s Hehmsoth awarded Fulbright to teach jazz in Chile

Posted by Jayme Blaschke
Office of Media Relations
May 5, 2016

Hank Hehmsoth,  a composer and jazz performing artist in the School of Music at Texas State University, has been awarded a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program grant to Santiago, Chile in music this summer.

Hehmsoth is the sixth Texas State faculty member to receive a Fulbright grant in 2016, joining Peter Dedek, Christine Norton, Julie Nathanielsz, Omar López and Augustine Agwuele. This is the highest number of Fulbright faculty at Texas State since at least 2005.

Hehmsoth will conduct master classes of contemporary American jazz in performance and theory at the Projazz Professional Institute. He will teach jazz arranging and composition, and perform citywide jazz festival concerts with Chilean musicians. This is his second Fulbright grant, his first one coming in 2013.

Hehmsoth is one of a distinguished group of U.S. professionals who will travel abroad this year through the Fulbright Specialists Program. The program, created in 2000 to complement the traditional Fulbright Scholar Program, provides short-term academic opportunities to prominent U.S. professionals to support guest lectures, master classes, and performances at academic institutions around the world.

The Fulbright Program is administered by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars and is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the United States government. It is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. For more than 60 years, U.S. faculty and professionals have taught, studied or conducted research abroad, and thousands of scholars from abroad have done similar work in the United State. Recipients of Fulbright awards are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement.

Hehmsoth was the 2015 Dean’s Seminar Award winner. He is the MacDowell Norton Stevens Fellow in Composition, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in jazz composition, placed first in the 2010 National Association of Composers USA, Texas Competition, and has been a multiple nominee for the Texas State Presidential Award for Excellence in Scholarly/Creative Activities. He was a member of the Austin-based Christopher Cross group, which won five Grammy Awards as well as an Academy Award for best song, and is a voting member of the NARAS Grammy Awards.

For more information about the Fulbright Specialist program visit www.cies.org/programs.