2026 Concert Season

The Grove Music Festival presents Bethany Robinson and the Purdue Jazz Collective on Saturday, January 17, 2025 from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. at St. John’s Episcopal Church, 405 N. Saginaw Road. The concert will start with a performance of the local High School All star band.

The Purdue Jazz Collective players:

Bethany Robinson – bass

Olivia Helmuth – vocals

Dan Gui – trumpet

Elliot Woo – alto sax

Seth DeWhitt – tenor sax

MacGuyver Cottrell – trombone                                                                         

Michael Wall – piano

TJ Kay – guitar

Carl Nielsen – drumset

Bethany Robinson is a Yamaha Performing Artist, GRAMMY Music Educator Award Finalist, NAfME Jazz Council Chair, Past-President of the Indiana Jazz Educators Association, and serves on the Jazz Education Network Board. She joined the faculty of Purdue University as the Director of Jazz and Purdue Jazz Fest director in 2024 after building the jazz program at Noblesville Schools from 1 to 6 jazz ensembles, where the top jazz ensemble was a 2-time Jazz at Lincoln Center Essentially Ellington Finalist and Indiana ISSMA Jazz State Honor Band in 2023. 

Robinson was the 2014 Indiana Jazz Educator of the Year, 2015 Noblesville Teacher of the Year, 2016 Indiana Teacher of the Year Semi-Finalist, named a 2022 Jazz Hero by the Jazz Journalists Association, and the 2023 Indiana Outstanding High School Music Educator of the Year. She is a 2-time Lilly Teacher Creativity Fellow, receiving grants to study jazz and culture in both the US (2011) and Brazil (2019). Bethany has co-led Indiana Jazz Girls Day since 2018, hosting workshops and side-by-side concerts for students around the state of Indiana to elevate student leaders through jazz.

Bethany has been a keynote speaker and presenter around the globe, including the Australia National Band and Orchestra Conference (2021), International Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic (2022), and Indiana, Oklahoma, Iowa and New York State Music Educator Conferences. Bethany was the guest conductor for the 2024 New York and 2025 Iowa and North Carolina All-State Jazz Ensembles, and the chief adjudicator and guest artist for the 2024 Victorian Schools’ Jazz Festival in Melbourne, Australia. She is a clinician and adjudicator independently and for Jazz at Lincoln Center, YAMAHA, Music For All, and an avid performer on upright bass, electric bass, and vocals.