Dawn Norfleet

Dr. Dawn M. Norfleet is a composer, flutist, vocalist and scholar based in Inglewood, California. An alumna of Wellesley College, she earned a master’s in music composition and a doctorate in ethnomusicology from Columbia University. Her dissertation, Hip-Hop Culture in New York City: The Role of Verbal Musical Performance, was cited in Current Musicology as “one of the first studies of hip-hop to incorporate extensive ethnography.”

She has recorded on a number of projects, including saxophonist Kamasi Washington’s four releases: The Epic, Truth, Harmony of Difference and Heaven and Earth. A versatile musician and bandleader, she draws inspiration from a broad range of traditions, from Claudio Monteverdi to Charles Stepney, with influences of jazz, soul, European and global music.

Dr. Norfleet has taught courses in the history of jazz, African American music and hip-hop at several institutions, including UC Irvine, Chaffey College, Colorado College, Cal Poly Pomona, UC San Diego and Grinnell College. She moderated UC Irvine’s 2020 online symposium, The 1619 Project: African American Music — The Sound of Freedom’s Journey, and has presented performance lectures and discussions on topics ranging from protest music and Afrofuturism to improvisation at Occidental College, UC Davis, Washington State University and the University of Virginia. Her scholarly contributions include chapters in African American Music: An Introduction (Routledge, 2006; 2015) and The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music: United States and Canada (2001), as well as work for Disney’s Education Division and Black Enterprise magazine.

As a composer, Dr. Norfleet is active in jazz, classical and popular traditions, as well as experimental and cross-genre work. Early in her career, she won a competition sponsored by the Leigh Morris Chorale in St. Paul, Minnesota, for her composition Prayer, based on text by Jean Toomer. She was a Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute fellow, mentored by Gabriela Lena Frank, and her first orchestral work was later premiered by the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra. Selected as a Chou Wen-chung Fellow with the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, she went on to receive two additional GLFCAM commissioning distinctions: the Composers for Racial Equality in the Arts Fellowship and the Composing Earth Cohort. She has been commissioned by Ensemble for These Times, Utah State University and other institutions to compose new works, which have premiered across the country.

Dedicated to equity, diversity and inclusion, Dr. Norfleet mentors youth and emerging composers, with a focus on underrepresented racial and gender communities. She provides music education for children in underserved Los Angeles schools and mentors young Black, Latiné and female musicians through Luna Composition Labs and the NAACP. Cultural historian Robin D.G. Kelley has described her as a “true Renaissance woman.”