Committed to exploring the boundaries of notated and improvised music,

Fred Hess attended the Creative Music Studio, Woodstock, NY (1979), founded the Boulder Creative Music Ensemble (1982), Denver’s Creative Music Works Orchestra (1993), and was a member of drummer Ginger Baker’s DJQ. He is director of Music Composition at Metro State University in Denver, CO.

Recording sixteen CDs under his own name, Hess received Colorado’s Composition Fellowship (1986/1994), won Denver’s inaugural Hennessey Jazz Search (1991), the Jazz Composers Alliance, Julius Hemphill Award (2000), and first prize at the First International Jazz Composers Symposium (2006). Favorable articles and reviews have appeared in DownBeat, Jazziz, JazzTimes, Coda, The Wire, JazzWise, Cadence, and online jazz websites.