Kurt Pearsall serves as Country Day’s Director of Bands,
directing the Jazz Band, Middle School Concert Band, High School
Concert Band, Garage Band, and Fifth Grade Band. He also teaches
musicians private lessons on campus. The bands participate
in daytime, evening and weekend performances throughout the
school year on campus and in the community, including music
festivals.
Before coming to Country Day in 2017, he concluded a 33-year-plus
teaching career in public schools, spending the bulk of the years
in the Washington Unified School District where he taught
marching band, jazz band, concert band, high school chorus,
madrigal choir and countless other project groups for all grade
levels K-12. His students can be found performing in a wide
variety of musical settings all over the world from a symphony
orchestra in Spain to the streets of New Orleans. His former
students include current distinguished music professors and music
educators in public schools.
During a short break in his teaching career, he became a full
time musician, and even though he returned to full time teaching,
never stopped working with the highest quality musical companies
including Walt Disney, Barnum and Bailey Circus, The
Music Circus and Broadway theater productions, The Sacramento and
Central Florida Symphonies, and countless big bands including the
Glen Miller Orchestra and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. He has
a strong performance background and has performed with Cab
Calloway, Natalie Cole, Englebert Humperdink, Frank Sinatra Jr.,
Wayne Newton, The Spinners, Johnny Mathis, The Temptations and
many more.
He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Music and his Master of
Music from California State University, Sacramento. His
college career included induction into the Phi Kappa Lambda, an
American honor society for undergraduate, graduate and professors
of music. He also is credentialed to teach social sciences
and has an intense interest in history.
Over the years he has participated in the California Music
Educators Association’s activities and served as the conductor
for the Sacramento Capitol Pops Concert Band, and in leadership
roles with the Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society, Washington
Unified School District and the University of Nevada, Reno’s
summer music camp at Lake Tahoe. He was instrumental in the
establishment of the Teagarden Jazz camp where he taught and was
camp director under the Sacramento Traditional Jazz
Society. He also helped to establish the Sacramento
Traditional Jazz Foundation.
When he is not performing and teaching, Kurt’s hobbies include
rebuilding and collecting 1960-1970 era Japanese motorcycles and
antique trucks. He also enjoys watching television, doing
research on the internet, wilderness survival and
outdoor sports and activities, coin collecting, photography,
and gardening.