Ed Sarath is professor of music and director of the program in Creativity and Consciousness Studies at the University of Michigan. He divides his time between teaching, scholarship, performing, composing, recording, speaking, and spearheading leadership initiatives that aim to bring this expanded vision to musical study and education at large. His most recent book, Improvisation, Creativity, and Consciousness: Jazz as Integral Template for Music, Education, and Society (SUNY/Albany, 2013), is the first to apply to music principles of an emergent, consciousness-based worldview called Integral Theory to music. He designed the B.F.A. in jazz and contemplative studies, the first degree program at a mainstream academic institution to include a significant meditation and consciousness studies component. He founded and serves as president of the International Society for Improvised Music. Recent keynote addresses include conferences at the National Association of Schools of Music and Society for Consciousness Studies. His composition Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, for 90-voice choir, string orchestra, and jazz soloists, represents his bridging of diverse stylistic horizons. His recording New Beginnings features the London Jazz Orchestra playing his large ensemble compositions and his solo flugelhorn work.
Sarath has presented master classes in improvisation at music schools and conservatories around the world and published in journals in wide-ranging disciplines. He is a fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts, American Council of Learned Societies, Ford Foundation, and the National Center for Institutional Diversity. He is the recipient of the Harold R. Johnson Diversity Award at the University of Michigan.
