Administration
Keith Jackson, Professor of Music and Director of the School of Music, has been a member of the music faculty since 1995. Dr. Jackson is active in both classical and jazz styles as a performer and clinician. He is a member of the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Ballet Orchestra.
Before coming to West Virginia University in 1995, Dr. Jackson taught at the University of North Carolina, Arizona State University , St. Augustine College and the North Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts.
Dr. Jackson performance credits include: the Phoenix Symphony, the North Carolina Symphony, the West Virginia Symphony, the USAir Jazz Orchestra, the Fiesta Brass, the Crown Chamber Brass, the North Carolina Jazz Repertory Orchestra, the Gregg Gelb Swing Band, the River City Brass Band and appearances on several recordings and public television. Dr. Jackson has performed on several occasions at both the International Trombone Workshop and the Eastern Trombone Workshop in Washington D.C. He has given solo recitals throughout the United States.
John Hendricks, III is presently serving as Assistant Dean of Recruiting and Retention for the College of Creative Arts at West Virginia University, in addition to serving as Director of Bands for the School of Music. Prior to these appointments, Professor Hendricks served as WVU’s Associate Director of Bands for twelve years. His present teaching duties include conducting the University’s Wind Symphony and instructing graduate conducting courses. His past duties at WVU include directing the WVU Marching Band, Symphonic Band, and Pep Band, as well as instructing several music education courses including undergraduate conducting and public school arranging. He has also served as Assistant Chair for the School of Music, coordinator of music undergraduate academic advising, coordinator of the WVU summer Mountaineer Music Camp, and conductor of the Studio Orchestra. Prior to his appointments at WVU, Professor Hendricks was the Assistant Director of Bands at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
Professor Hendricks received his Masters Degree in Conducting and his Bachelors Degree in Music Education from West Virginia University. While working toward his Masters, he was actively involved with the West Virginia University Bands as a graduate assistant. He also served for five years as the band director at Spencer High School in Spencer, WV.
Besides his current administrative and teaching duties, Professor Hendricks is active as a guest conductor for various honor groups on the county, district, regional, and all-state levels. He also serves frequently as an adjudicator and clinician throughout the eastern United States. He has had several chapters published in the popular Teaching Music Through Performance in Band series by GIA Publications. His current research is focused upon the use of hymns in wind band music.
Professor Hendricks is a member of several professional music affiliations including the College Band Directors National Association, National Band Association, National Association for Music Education, and Phi Beta Mu. Professor Hendricks is presently the state chair for the National Band Association, co-advisor for the Omicron Chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi, and past-president of the Big East Band Directors Association. He has also held state positions for the College Band Directors National Association and the West Virginia Music Educators Association. He is an honorary member of Kappa Kappa Psi, the Golden Key National Honor Society, and the WVU Mountain Honorary. Professor Hendricks is a past recipient of the “West Virginia Band Director of the Year” award presented by the Tau Chapter of Phi Beta Mu. Professor Hendricks has been an arranger for university and high school bands, as well as a coordinator for various events and conferences.
Mikylah Myers, professor of violin, currently fills the role of Assistant Dean of Student Artistic Achievement to better serve students and faculty in their artistic endeavors.
Dr. Myers has a large studio of undergraduate and graduate violin students at West Virginia University, and has received many honors for her commitment to and passion for teaching. She was named West Virginia’s Outstanding Studio Teacher of the Year by the West Virginia chapter of the American String Teachers Association in both 2010 and 2009, and received the West Virginia University School of Music’s Outstanding Teaching award in 2008. In 2014 Dr. Myers was named the West Virginia University College of Creative Arts "Outstanding Teacher." She regularly gives string clinics in West Virginia and master classes at colleges throughout the nation. She recently traveled to Spain to perform and teach master classes at the top music conservatories in Barcelona, Zaragoza, and San Sebastian, and to Seoul, Korea to teach master classes at Sejong University and Konkuk University. She is a past president of the West Virginia state chapter of the American String Teachers Association.
Dr. Myers' former students teach and perform professionally throughout the United States, Europe, South Africa, and Asia. Recent graduates have won college teaching positions in Jakarta and Seoul, Korea and high school orchestra directorships in thriving programs in West Virginia, Ohio and Texas. Her students regularly perform at summer music festivals including: the Roundtop Music Festival (TX); Wintergreen Music Festival (VA); Texas Music Festival (Houston), AIMS in Graz, Austria; Opera in the Ozarks (Arkansas), and perform with the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra and New York’s “The Orchestra Now.” Violinists studying under Dr. Myers have been national finalists in the 2014 and 2016 MTNA Solo and Chamber Music Competitions. Beyond performing and teaching careers, many of Dr. Myers' students have gone on to prestigious academic programs in musicology and arts administration, including at the University of Oxford in England and Goldsmiths, University of London.
Before joining the WVU music faculty in 2007, Dr. Myers was concertmaster of the San Juan Symphony and assistant professor of violin and viola at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. She was also the founder, artistic director, and conductor of the Durango Youth Symphony. Dr. Myers enjoys conducting, and was honored to conduct the inaugural West Virginia All State Middle School Orchestra in 2015.
An award-winning chamber musician, Dr. Myers was formerly the violinist of the Red Shoe Piano Trio at Fort Lewis College and the violinist of the Moores Piano Trio in Houston, Texas, which was the silver prize-winner at the 2000 Carmel Chamber Music Competition. She has performed internationally as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Italy, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, and Spain, and was a 19-year member of the Britt Festival Orchestra in Jacksonville, Oregon. She also performed as a member of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Florida for two seasons. In 2016 Dr. Myers joined the faculty of the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute at Quartz Mountain, where she coaches the orchestra’s violin sections and performs chamber music with OSAI faculty.
Dr. Myers received her doctoral and master’s degrees in violin performance from the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music, where she studied with Fredell Lack. During her time in Houston, Dr. Myers regularly performed with the Houston Symphony and the Houston Grand Opera. Dr. Myers earned her bachelor of music degree in violin performance from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where she studied violin with Roland and Almita Vamos. She was also a four-year-member and co-captain of the Oberlin College women’s soccer team.
