Jazz Saxophonist Gary Bartz Receives Honorary Doctorate from New England Conservatory
Opera star Denyce Graves served as commencement speaker at NEC's 155th ceremony.
Grammy Award winning jazz saxophonist and educator Gary Bartz received an honorary Doctor of Music degree from New England Conservatory at its 155th Commencement on May 17, 2026. Innovative Vivo Performing Arts (formerly Celebrity Series of Boston) President and Executive Director Gary Dunning also received an honorary doctorate. NEC alumna Denyce Graves '88 UD, '14 hon. DM, served as the distinguished Commencement speaker.
"We are thrilled to welcome back NEC alumna Denyce Graves, and to honor the extraordinary careers of Gary Bartz and Gary Dunning,” said NEC President Andrea Kalyn. “Each of these individuals reflects the excellence to which our students aspire and the impact they seek to have, both in our field and on society more broadly. As we celebrate NEC's Class of 2026, these honorees offer truly inspiring examples for our graduates' futures.”
Bartz has been one of the most influential purveyors of what he calls “informal composition” (as opposed to improvisation) on alto saxophone since the 1960s. Bartz's long and distinguished career includes attending The Juilliard School, working with the Charles Mingus Jazz Workshop and the Max Roach/Abbey Lincoln group, joining Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and Miles Davis's band, and forming his own group, NTU Troop, which blended soul, funk, African folk music, hard bop, and avant-garde jazz. He has released more than 45 solo albums as well as appearing on more than 200 as a guest artist. Over his long career he has continued to innovate, working with some of the most impressive up-and-coming artists in jazz today — including Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge for their Jazz Is Dead series, and the jazz-funk band Maisha.
In 1997, Bartz received a Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz Performance for his work on Roy Hargrove's Habana album, and, in 2005, received a Grammy Award for his work as a sideman on McCoy Tyner's recording Illuminations. In 2015, Bartz received the BNY Mellon Jazz Living Legacy Award, which honors jazz musicians from the mid-Atlantic region who have achieved distinction in performance and education. Since 2001, Bartz has been a professor of saxophone and jazz performance at Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Bartz focuses his teaching on finding new ways for his students to "open their ears" and presses his Oberlin students to truly hear the music they think they know so well.
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