Performance
Sean Peterson is a double bassist and composer based in Eugene, Oregon. He specializes in jazz, but also performs classical, salsa, folk, and other genres. He performs regularly with Halie Loren, The Emerald City Jazz Kings, Laura Kemp, Torrey Newhart, Carl Woideck, and as a member of the Shedd Theatricals orchestra. He has performed with classical groups such as Microphilharmonic, Oregon Bach Collegium, Cascadia Chamber Opera, and Central Chamber Orchestra, including works like the Mozart Requiem and Handel’s Messiah. Previously he performed regularly with Tony Glausi, Eleven Eyes, Taarka, the Oregon Composers’ Big Band, Beta Collide, John Shipe, the Oregon Jazz Ensemble, Azuquita, and Paul Biondi. In 2015 he released his first album as a leader, Let It Show, which he composed, arranged, recorded, and mixed. Sean does it for the love.
Scholarship
Sean holds an MMus in jazz studies and a PhD in musicology from the University of Oregon. In his dissertation, entitled "Something Real: Rap, Resistance, and the Music of the Soulquarians,” he reads the work of a loose collective of hip hop and R&B producers known as The Soulquarians as a musical discourse of opposition to dominant trends in commercial rap of the late 1990s and early 2000s. He has presented papers on hip hop producer J Dilla, singer/composer Erykah Badu, singer/composer D’Angelo, and hip hop band The Roots at regional and national academic conferences. His other projects have involved research on intersections and influence between jazz and hip hop music, dynamics of live instrumentation and music technology, rhetorical analyses of jazz performances, and hip hop in musical theater. Sean teaches university classes on The Beatles, Jazz History, Blues History, Rock History, and Hip Hop History, and is the founder and coach of the University of Oregon Hip Hop Ensemble, a for-credit band which composes, arranges, and performs hip hop music.