David Baker, Jr., is a world-renowned composer and master of multiple instruments, including the trombone, cello and piano.

The Distinguished Professor of Music at the Jacobs School of Music is a writer, clinician, pedagogue, chair of the jazz studies department and director of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra.

Growing up in Indianapolis during the 1930s and 40s, Baker immersed himself into music early on in his childhood and young adulthood. Although he came from a non-musical family, it seemed he had something special inside him right from the start.