Marty Ashby

Marty Ashby is an arts administrator, producer, musician, consultant and motivational speaker who uses music as his lens to view the planet.
Arts Administrator
Ashby completed his undergraduate degree in 1981 at Ithaca College and moved to New York City. While living in New York, Ashby had three jobs and worked as a musician. Between 1982 and 1986, Ashby worked at The Cleveland Orchestra, Ohio Ballet, National Symphony and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He used techniques learned at these organizations regarding marketing, promotion, consumer relation database management, presenting, fundraising, etc. to work on small scale jazz events and festivals.
In 1987, Ashby came to Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild where he created a Jazz Subscription Series. Ashby has served as a panelist for workshops and conferences from 1984 to the present including the National Endowment for the Arts, state Arts Councils, the International, Association for Jazz Education, and Jazz Connect conference within a conference at the Association for Performing Arts Presenters.
Producer / Artistic Director
As an undergraduate at Ithaca College, Ashby produced Jazz Festivals as a vehicle to premiere new music and perform with jazz masters. Ashby has developed full jazz concert series programming, coordinated block-booking opportunities, curated one-time-only events, developed youth jazz education curriculum modules, and created audience development and outreach projects.
Consultant
Ashby acts as a consultant for marketing plans for a subscription concert series, designs for performance and recording venues and strategic plans for audience development and revenue generation. Ashby has consulted with many jazz presenting and other non-profit organizations including, San Francisco Jazz Festival, the Japan Society, the Museum of African American Museum and is currently the gallery consultant for the Jazz exhibit in the North American gallery at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, AZ. Most recently, Ashby was selected as the EPP Goldman-Sachs fellow at the National Museum of American History (NMAH) to develop a high-level strategic planning model for the NMAH reopening of its West wing in 2014.
Motivational Speaker
Ashby’s motivational speaking centers around the concept of Jazz Is Life®. The principals of jazz, are applied to practical business applications. He has presented five seminars for Japan Society’s U.S.-Japan Innovators Network (New York, Pittsburgh, New Orleans and Japan), as well as at TEDx, Family Housing Fund, I Live NY, and for Starbuck’s Global Summit.
Educator
Ashby is an adjunct professor at Oberlin Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College, where he teaches a Business of Jazz course to jazz performance majors, and the Mary Pappert School of Music at Duquesne University. At Oberlin, the semester long study includes an overview of the Global Jazz Business, providing insights into key music business components and their relationship to Jazz. In addition, Marty offers two workshops: 1) Brazilian Jazz, an in-depth investigation of Brazilian jazz its compositional structure, its contributors, performance techniques and its influence on other genres of music; and 2) Barney Kessel and the Art of Trio Guitar, designed for composers and arrangers whose primary instrument is guitar or bass, but is open to all performance majors and focuses on arranging techniques.
Awards / Degrees
In September 2012, Ashby received the Century Club Award. This is the highest honor given to Duquesne University alumni. The Century Club was established during Duquesne’s 100th anniversary in 1978 to recognize graduates with exemplary records of professional achievement and service to the University and community. Of the more than 98,000 alumni, only 317 have been admitted to its elite ranks.
Ashby has received three GRAMMY® Awards and two Latin GRAMMY® Awards for producing albums in categories including: Best Large Ensemble, Best Latin Jazz and Best Jazz Vocal album. He was also named one of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette’s Top 50 Power Brokers in the Arts in 2001 and 1998.

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