Sandra Shaw takes over the direction of the Kalamazoo College Jazz Band for it’s 2024-25 Season. Over the course of a 33-year career, Shaw has served as a band, orchestra and jazz band director, primarily at Kalamazoo Public Schools (KPS). While at KPS, she designed curriculum for music theory, composition and small ensemble courses and in 2015, she composed and directed music that included jazz combo, choirs, chamber strings and vocal soloists used in a video by KPS to celebrate the first ten years of The Kalamazoo
Promise (a college scholarship program for KPS graduates). Sandra earned the String Teacher of the Year award from the Michigan State Band and Orchestra Association in 2018 and The Prism Award from Sigma Alpha Iota in 2022. Shaw currently teaches woodwind class for West Michigan Homeschool Fine Arts, elementary school piano labs for The Gilmore Piano Festival and occasionally teaches orchestra and band at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. A performer with roots beginning in a family band, she plays saxophone with guitarist, Gene Butler, the Kalamazoo Big Band, Gull Lake Jazz Orchestra, Lew Boyd Big Band and the Kalamazoo Saxophone Quartet. She has performed as an extra in the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra and with many artists visiting Kalamazoo. She also performs on violin with the Kalamazoo College Philharmonia and in string quartets with friends. Sandra holds degrees in music education from Western Michigan University (BM 1987) and VanderCook College of Music (MM 2005).