Shelly Berg is the dynamic Artistic Director of The Jazz Cruise and has once again helped to curate an amazing line-up of performances for the cruise, as well as being a gifted member of our All Stars. A Steinway piano artist and a five-time GRAMMMY®-nominated arranger and orchestrator, Shelly has performed and recorded with a wide range of artists including Kurt Elling, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Niki Haris, Arturo Sandoval, Gloria Estefan, Stevie Wonder, Seal, Ledisi, Pharrell Williams, Renée Fleming and James Galway. His Film orchestration work includes Warner Bros. Almost Heroes and For Your Consideration, Fox’s Men of Honor and the NBC mini-series The ’60s. He has written for the Royal Philharmonic, the American Symphony and orchestras worldwide.
An award-winning educator with over 40 years of leadership in higher education, Shelly Berg is the Dean of the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. He previously held the McCoy/Sample endowed professorship of jazz studies in the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California where he taught for 16 years. He is a past president of the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE), and was named 2003 Educator of the Year by the Los Angeles Jazz Society. In 2002, Shelly was the recipient of the IAJE Lawrence Berk Leadership Award. He also hosted “Generation Next” on Sirius XM Real Jazz, currently serves as artistic advisor for Jazz Roots at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, and is on the board of SFJAZZ.