Drew Dahan

Bitter Jester Music Festival Judge

“I had a blast as a judge during the 2021 BJMF! Everything ran really smoothly and it was great working with so many other great musicians on the judging panel. The amount of talent that we saw from the contestants was incredible.”

- Drew Dahan

Andrew Dahan, originally from Skokie, IL, is the Director of Choirs at Niles North High School (Skokie, IL), where he directs all of the curricular choirs, oversees the Vocal Jazz Program, and directs the award-winning vocal jazz ensemble Take One. From 2018-2021, he was the Director of Choirs at Highland Park High School.

From 2014-2018, he was Head of Music Education at Illinois Wesleyan University, where he taught courses in music education, including Foundations and Principles of Music Education, Choral Music Methods, Practicum in Music Education, and Seminar in Student Teaching. He also founded and directed the IWU vocal jazz ensembles - Unlicensed Syncopation and Vocal Jazz Lab - during his tenure there. In 2017, Unlicensed Syncopation was invited to perform as part of the JENerations Jazz Festivals at the Jazz Education Network conference (New Orleans, LA). He also spent seven years as the Director of Choirs at Addison Trail High School (Addison, IL).

He holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Choral Music Education from Northwestern University (Evanston, IL), a Master of Music degree in Jazz Pedagogy from the University of Miami (Coral Gables, FL) and completed coursework for the Ph.D. in Music Education, also from the University of Miami.

Dahan has presented numerous sessions at the Illinois Music Education Conference aimed at helping choral music directors learn how to incorporate jazz into their programs, and to this end, has had the pleasure of working with many high school students around Illinois and Florida. He has also served as an adjudicator at the Tiffin University ProMusic Festival (Tiffin, OH), the Indiana University of Pennsylvania Cavalcade of Choirs (Indiana, PA) and ChoralFest Manitoba (Winnipeg, MB), and has also served as a clinician for the JENerations Jazz Festival. He presented an interest session at the 2019 Jazz Education Network (JEN) conference (Reno, NV) about effective assessment for vocal jazz ensembles. In March 2022, he served as one of the judges for the Iowa Vocal Jazz Championships (Des Moines, IA).

As a director, Dahan has had the privilege of serving as director or assistant director for various choral and vocal jazz ensembles at the University of Miami, numerous ILMEA District Vocal Jazz Ensembles, as well as various Honor Choirs in Illinois, and had the privilege of directing the 2020 ILMEA All-State Vocal Jazz Ensemble.

As a performer, he has had the privilege of singing the National Anthem for the Miami Heat, as well as singing as a background vocalist for notable performers such as George Benson, Gloria Estefan, Ben Folds, Raul Midón, and Steve Miller, as well as featured male vocalist for the Miami City Ballet’s production of West Side Story Suite. For several seasons, Dahan has sung with the Grant Park Festival Chorus (Chicago, IL) under the direction of Christopher Bell and Carlos Kalmar.