Future in Music Team Members

Staff

Yuval Tessman-Bar-On - Director

Yuval Tessman-Bar-On (she/her) is passionate about musicology, performance, and teaching and she often ties these fields together through interdisciplinary work. She is in her second year of a Master of Music degree program in trumpet performance at the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, where she also works as a research assistant and teaching assistant. She is a brass and musicianship teaching artist at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s OrchKids. Previously, Yuval did her undergraduate studies at McGill University's Schulich School of Music, where she completed a double major in trumpet performance and music history and graduated in 2022 with Dean’s Honors and an Outstanding Achievement award in music history. While at McGill University, Yuval worked as a tutor for the music theory and music history undergraduate core classes. Yuval regularly enjoys performing in symphony orchestras, chamber ensembles, and contemporary ensembles and has also performed in jazz bands and marching bands. She has performed as a substitute trumpet player in Symphoria (formerly known as Syracuse Symphony Orchestra). Yuval currently studies trumpet with Tony Prisk, and prior to that has studied with Paul Merkelo and John Raschella.

Yuval is passionate about connecting issues of social justice and education to her musical endeavors, which is part of her motivation behind founding the Future in Music Program. Yuval also volunteers with the International Women’s Brass Conference (IWBC). In her musicological work, Yuval’s research is primarily focused on themes of social justice in music, both in popular music and in brass and orchestral music. Her recent work focuses on how gender identity intersects with the instrument one chooses, and how this affects women and other gender-marginalized brass players. Yuval has presented this research at the 2022 International Women’s Brass Conference. She hopes to continue to develop this research, as well as to explore areas in musicology such as music of the Middle East, music of the Holocaust, and Jewish music.

Yuval has earned various awards, including the Rachael Duncan Memorial Scholarship from the IWBC (2022), and at McGill University, the Grace Evelyn Tuttle Scholarship (2019, 2021) the Wirth Brass Scholarship (2019), the Helmut Blume Scholarship (2020, 2021). Aside from music, Yuval loves to rock climb, read, hike, run, weight-lift, travel, and ride horses.

Bell Thompson

Bell Thompson (she/her) is a vibrant young trumpet player and bandleader based out of Philadelphia, PA. Bell’s melodic and expressive trumpet playing embraces the jazz tradition while showcasing her clear sound and unique voice. Raised in Seattle, WA, Bell began playing trumpet at age nine, her first trumpet teacher Owuor Arunga of the band Macklemore. Bell attended Seattle’s award-winning Garfield High School jazz program under the direction of Clarence Acox in addition to studying with many great teachers including Samantha Boshnack, Jay Thomas, and Wayne Horvitz. Bell is currently a student of Terell Stafford’s as part Boyer College of Music’s Jazz Performance program at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA.

As a bandleader, Bell has been featured on KNKX Radio’s live studio sessions with her all-female “10 O’Clock Quartet”, as well as her quintet, “5 Feet Up”. As an advocate for young women in jazz Bell can be found interviewed for the article, Generation Next: Four Voices From Seattle, by Paul Rauch, in AllAboutJazz.com, and featured in the documentary, In Her Hands, produced and directed by Kay D. Ray. Bell has performed as a featured soloist with the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra, and the Seattle Women’s Jazz Orchestra with Gail Pettis. Touring Europe alongside the Garfield Jazz Orchestra Bell performed as part of the Montreux Jazz Festival, Jazz a Vienne, Jazz à Toulon Festival, and the International La Spezia Jazz Festival. She has received Outstanding Soloist awards from the Reno Jazz Festival, Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival, Bellevue College Jazz Festival and Bellevue High School Jazz Festival.As an educator, Bell has taught as a guest clinician and soloist with the Auburn High School Jazz Festival in Auburn, WA, and alongside Gary Hammon at The Annual Ballard High School Summer Jazz Workshop in Seattle, WA. In 2021 Bell was awarded the Jamey Aebersold Endowed Scholarship from the Jazz Educaton Network. Bell’s interest in qualitative research grew from her desire to shine a light on the issue of gender equity in jazz education. She conceptualized, designed, and acquired funding for, an interview based qualitative research study of the experience of young female instrumentalists currently participating in high school jazz education programs. Bell’s study was funded through the Temple University Diamond Research Scholars Program. Her study, Gender and Jazz: The Experience of Women in Jazz Education, was awarded the 2021 Livingston Undergraduate Research Award for Diversity and Social Justice.