Collin Felter is A Music Theorist and Multi-Instrumentalist

Collin Felter is a music theorist, performer, and composer focused on the marriage of scholarship and creative practice. He is currently completing a Ph.D. in the History and Theory of Music at the University of California, Irvine under the advising of Amy Bauer, where he teaches music theory, jazz theory, and improvisation. Felter’s dissertation, "Jazz Pentatonicism: A Study of History, Abstraction, and Pragmaticism,” examines pentatonicism in jazz through a multi-methodological study. More broadly, his research explores jazz, funk, popular music, improvisation, and pedagogy, with particular interest in analytical methods that emerge from musical practice and cultural context. Felter’s scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in the Journal of Jazz Studies, Music Theory Online, and SMT-V, with additional work presented regularly at national and international conferences.

Before doctoral study, Felter earned a B.M. in Commercial Music (Trombone Performance) from Belmont University in Nashville, where he established himself as a prominent session trombonist and guitarist. He later completed an M.M. in Jazz Performance at the University of Denver, studying with Steve Wiest while directing the Lamont Jazz Ensemble and continuing to develop his work as both an artist and academic.

Today, Felter remains active as a performer in the Los Angeles jazz, funk, and avant-garde communities. His work as artist includes two albums released under his own name and recent collaborations with keyboardist and composer Jacob Mann. Throughout Felter’s expansive work he continues to explore the ways that musical practice, historical context, and analytical inquiry inform one another.