Last year, saxophonist and composer Ted Nash concluded his final season with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, ending a wildly productive tenure of more than 25 years. “Just as I was finishing up there,” Nash recalls, “Terell wrote, and said: ‘Hey, would you consider teaching at Temple?’”
That note, from Terell Stafford — Director of Jazz Studies at Temple University’s Boyer College of Music and Dance, where he also serves as Department Chair of Instrumental Studies — was a validation, but hardly an instant sell. Nash was on the threshold of new freedoms as an artist, and disinclined to swap one institutional affiliation for another. But he also knew Boyer to be a special case.