We are delighted to welcome John Chin to the Department of Music as the new Director of the LAJPP (Louis Armstrong Jazz Performance Program) in the Fall of 2026. He is a pianist, composer, and educator whose work celebrates jazz's roots in improvisation, composition, and cultural perspective. He has received an MM from Rutgers University and an Artist's Diploma from Juilliard, and his teaching credits include Long Island University’s Roc Nation School of Music and as a teaching artist with Carnegie Hall.
John Chin has been involved with the New York jazz scene since 1998. He has worked with many great performers, including Ron Carter, Benny Golson, Dayna Stephens, and Ari Hoenig, among others. He fuses jazz, pop, and Western classical traditions into his work, and has produced five albums as a bandleader. Chin's most recent, Journey of Han, released in 2024 and explores both his identity as a Korean American and his identity within the great American art form that is jazz. Columbia prides itself on its interdisciplinary approach to jazz studies. The LAJPP is a central part of a larger mission which sees jazz as music without borders and ultimately without limits, and a mode for the integration of forward-thinking models of scholarly inquiry with innovative teaching and community dialogue. We look forward to bringing John Chin into our community to see what new music we can make!
