Dr. Dawn Norfleet is a composer, vocalist, flutist and scholar based in Inglewood, CA. Her concert music reflects diverse idioms that influence and inspire her: jazz, global rhythms, European concert music, and beyond. She received numerous composition commissions since 2021, including for world premieres by the Pacific Palisades-based Chamber Orchestra of St. Matthews (relocated to Santa Monica, March 14, 2025); a solo piano work for pianist Liza Stepanova in Santa Cruz; a piano-violin duo in Oakland; and two vocal trio settings of texts by Jean Toomer (1894-1967) in Utah. In 2020, she received her first commission: two works for pianist-vocalist, Clarice Assad, from the American Composers Orchestra. She gained several distinctions and co-commissions as a Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music Chou Wen-chung Fellow. She also participated in the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute (an initiative of the American Composers Orchestra) at UCLA and Columbia University, and the Banff International Workshop for Jazz and Creative Music in Canada.
As a bandleader, she led an improvising trio at LA Phil’s “Noon to Midnight” Festival in 2024 with multi-instrumentalists JoVia Armstrong and Fabricio Watanay. Previously her ensembles, which included Marvin “Smitty” Smith, Gerry Gibbs, and Sekou Bunch, performed at Jazz at LACMA, California African American Museum, Skirball Cultural Center, and The World Stage. As a vocalist, she sang on ALL RISE! — Wynton Marsalis’ epic orchestral jazz work in 2022. Speaking of “epic”, she has recorded and performed with saxophonist, Kamasi Washington since 2013. Dr. Norfleet performed with Andy Milne at Lewis and Clark College, University of Virginia, and UC San Diego. In New York City, performance collaborators included Vijay Iyer, Helen Sung, Lonnie Plaxico, and Bertha Hope.
Dr. Norfleet taught female and gender-expansive teen composers as a Luna Composition Lab mentor, and volunteers with the Georgia Laster Association of Musicians branch of the National Association of Negro Musicians, and ACT-SO, an NAACP program for outstanding high school students. Additionally, she conducts workshops on African American music for educators and students at the Music Center, LACMA, and the Skirball Cultural Center. She currently serves as her alumnae class President at Wellesley College.
Concurrently, she is a Jazz Studies faculty member at UC Irvine, teaching histories of jazz, hip-hop, and African American music. There, she organized and moderated a ground-breaking panel discussion, “Women Of The One: Trailblazers of Funk”, featuring Dawn Silva and Jeanette Washington Perkins (P-Funk), Maxi B. (Mary Jane Girls), and Medusa the Gangsta Goddess (Los Angeles underground hip-hop legend) in March 2024. Previously, she was an Albert Seay Distinguished Professor of Music at Colorado College, and Artist/Scholar-in-Residence at Grinnell College. Her writings include contributions to African American Music: an Introduction, eds. Mellonee Burnim and Portia Maultsby, and Black Enterprise Magazine.
Teaching Areas: African American Music, Music of Protest and Social Change, Jazz, Hip-hop, Composition. Her doctoral dissertation was acknowledged as “one of the first studies of hip-hop to incorporate extensive ethnography…” (KC Holt, Current Musicology, 2019.)
Key scholarly advisors and/or mentors included Bill Barron, Bill Lowe, Gabriela Lena Frank, Jeff Nichols, Mark Tucker, Michael Largey, Portia Maultsby, Robert G. O’Meally, T. Ranganathan, and Steve Roens.
Ph.D. in Music (Ethnomusicology), Columbia University; M.A. in Music (Composition), Columbia University; B.A., Wellesley College.
