Horace Alexander Young, chair of contemporary music at Santa Fe University of Art and Design, was honored recently with the WSU Alumni Association Alumni Achievement Award in recognition of his three decades of professional touring and recording jazz music with top performers worldwide while also teaching privately and at the university level.
Young earned a master of arts degree in music at WSU in 1983 and returned as an associate professor of music 1998-2008. He developed courses in music business and established internships for WSU students in major music industry companies in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and at the Seattle branch of the Recording Academy, which awards the annual Grammys.
Young’s varied experiences as an instrumentalist, vocalist, and composer/arranger led to more than 80 recordings, several international tours, and performances with prominent musicians, such as B.B. King, James Brown, The Temptations, Bill Withers, Anita Baker, Freddy Fender, Dionne Warwick, Huey Lewis and the News, Nancy Wilson, and many others.
His most notable achievements include conducting the National Symphony of South Africa in 1993 in a nationally televised concert. He was one of the first people of native African descent to conduct an orchestra in that country and the first African-American.