About
Jefferson Todd Frazier is a composer, educator, non profit leader and entrepreneur.
He is the Executive Director of Young Audiences of Houston (YAH), one of 31 independent U.S. chapters of Young Audiences, Inc. Founded in 1956 by violinist Fredel Lack with support from Ima Hogg and Mrs. William P. Hobby, the mission of YAH is to educate and inspire children through the fine arts. In its most recently completed season alone, YAH’s roster of 78 professional artists, representing all fine arts disciplines, brought the arts and culture to more than 330,000 K-12 children through over 2,200 high quality performances, workshops, and residences in school and community sites throughout the greater Houston area.
In addition, Mr. Frazier serves as Director for The Center for the Performing Arts Medicine (CPAM) at Methodist Hospital. CPAM is the nation’s most comprehensive group of medical professionals, based in the world-renowned Texas Medical Center, teamed to provide preventive, diagnostic, specialty and emergency care to performing artists. In addition to providing performing artists access to expert medical care, CPAM has begun developing new research projects that will explore the various uses of the arts in relationship to improved human performance, cognitive development, and healing. He feels the unique perspective afforded to him by these key positions in arts and medicine will provide dynamic new opportunities for the community.
Mr. Frazier is also the Founder of American Festival for the Arts (AFA), serving for 15 years as its first Executive Director. AFA was established in 1993 to safeguard the availability of high quality music education and performance opportunities for youth and to broaden the audience for American works and the standard classical music literature. Its primary project, the AFA Summer Music Conservatory, which employs 75 of the regions finest music educators and trains over 300 promising Southeast Texas K-12 students each summer, offers a broad and innovative curriculum of advanced musical training and performance with orchestra/chamber music, jazz, chorus, composition, theory/history, private lesson and elective divisions at campuses in Houston and Beaumont, Texas.
Frazier is a graduate of the Wilhelm Schole, River Oaks Baptist School and the Episcopal High School in Houston, TX and received his undergraduate and graduate level music composition and pedagogy training from The Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, and The Juilliard School in New York, NY where his major teachers included American composers David Diamond and Samuel Adler. On the occasion of the Juilliard School’s 100th anniversary in 2006, Frazier was recognized as one of 100 distinguished alumni and profiled in the Juilliard Journal’s “A Quiet Revolution: Juilliard Alumni and The Transformation of Education in America Through the Arts.”
He has been honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Houston Arts Alliance, American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, and Texas Music Teachers Association. He serves on the Advisory Boards of the Wilhelm Schole International Foundation, Center for Performing Arts Medicine at Methodist Hospital, Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, the Texas-French Alliance for the Arts, the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, ArtReach, Music in Medicine Texas, is a Fellow of the US-Japan Foundation’s Leadership Program and a member of the Texas Commission on the Arts Grant Review Panel and Houston Independent School District Foundation’s Leadership Council for the Fine Arts.
Frazier’s other interests, which inspire his music and teaching, are pursued through J. F. Brazos Enterprises, Ltd. where he serves as President, and include an active involvement in history, literature and manuscripts, medical technology, real estate and agriculture. He is a 6th generation Texan and is proud of his wife Jennifer, son Mac, daughter Kenzie, and his Merriman, Frazier, Bryant and McReynolds Clans.
