Staff
Scott Simon - Curricular Percussion Instructor
Email: simons@eths202.org
Scott Simon grew up in northern Illinois, and began playing percussion at the age of ten. While actively involved in his middle/high school band programs, Scott was exposed early on to the Phantom Regiment Drum and Bugle Corps. He marched four years with the Phantom Regiment Cadets/Phantom Legion drum corps, where they won two Division Three Drum Corps Midwest Championships (1997-98) and one Division Three Drum Corps International Fred Sanford Percussion Award (1999). His competitive marching experience continued with the Phantom Regiment in the summers of 2000, 2002, and 2003. In the 2002 season, he was awarded first place in the Drum Corps International Solo Competition in Madison, WI. After aging out, Scott then joined the percussion staff for Regiment for the 2009 and 2010 seasons and the Santa Clara Vanguard staff for the 2011 season. He is now on percussion staff with The Cavaliers Drum and Bugle Corps from Rosemont, IL.
Scott received his BM at Illinois State University, and his MM at Central Michigan University, both with an emphasis in percussion. At both institutions, he was involved with the concert bands, jazz ensembles, and percussion ensembles. While completing his masters at CMU, the percussion ensemble was among the three groups selected to play at the 2006 Percussive Arts Society International Convention in Austin Texas.
Currently, Scott lives in Chicago, Illinois where he maintains a career in music education and performance In addition to ETHS, Scott also spends his fall season working with the Northwestern University Marching Band, where he serves as instructor and arranger. As a performer, Scott can be found playing in pits for numerous musical theater productions throughout the Chicagoland area.
Brian Gephart - Jazz Saxophone
Email: brian@briangephart.com
Phone: (847) 212-3872
Brian Gephart is a jazz tenor player and composer in the Chicago area. He has been a member of the ETHS Jazz combo faculty since 2010 and teaches several of our jazz saxophonists.
Deanna Witkowski - Jazz Piano
Email: witkowskid@eths202.org
Pianist, composer, and scholar Deanna Witkowski moves with remarkable ease between Brazilian, jazz, classical, and sacred music. Her first book, Mary Lou Williams: Music for the Soul (Liturgical Press), is the winner of the 2022 ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award and the 2022 Jazz Journalists Association Award for Biography of the Year.
Her seventh recording, Force of Nature (MCG Jazz), featuring her trio and quartet arrangements of compositions by Williams, reached number five on the JazzWeek nationwide radio chart and remained in the top ten most played albums on jazz radio for more than ten weeks. The two projects cap a twenty-year deep dive into the ground-breaking impact of Williams’ life and music, making Witkowski one of the few living authorities on the iconic pianist. As a sought-after Williams expert, she has taught for Jazz at Lincoln Center, presented at the Kennedy Center, Loyola University Chicago, and Fordham University, and performed Williams’ compositions as a featured guest with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
In 2024, Witkowski completed her PhD in jazz studies at the University of Pittsburgh and is currently writing her second book, Jazz in the Pews: Experiments in Sunday Worship in the 1960s. Her 2025 awards include the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation/Jazz Education Network research fellowship and a project grant from The Crossroads Project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation and Princeton University.
Witkowski is the winner of the 2002 Great American Jazz Piano Competition. During her twenty- three years on the New York City jazz scene, she held the piano chair in the BMI/New York Jazz Composers Orchestra for ten years under the artistic direction of Jim McNeely. She has recorded with Grammy nominees John Patitucci, Kate McGarry, and Donny McCaslin, and has performed and toured with vocalists Lizz Wright, Nnenna Freelon, Erin Bode, Filó Machado, and Vanessa Rubin. Her albums range from powerhouse arrangements of Cole Porter standards (Wide Open Window; Length of Days) to sparkling trio re-imaginings of traditional hymns (Makes the Heart to Sing: Jazz Hymns) to solo piano that blurs the lines between Brazilian, jazz, and classical (Raindrop: Improvisations with Chopin).
Dedicated to bringing communities together through jazz, Witkowski has worked as a guest music leader in over one hundred churches across the United States. Her weekly video series, “Off the Page: Sacred Jazz,” shares practical resources for church musicians and her jazz hymn arrangements have been purchased by over 500 churches. A prolific choral composer, Witkowski has won multiple competitions for her concert and sacred works. Her modern justice anthem, “We Walk in Love,” is part of the Justice Choir songbook and has been sung at the sixtieth anniversary of the Little Rock Nine at Central High School in Arkansas in 2017, at the 2018 St. Olaf Choral Festival, and as the closing song at the 2020 Chorus America conference.
Commissions and new compositions have been funded by organizations including the New York State Council on the Arts (for her Afro-Brazilian project, the Nossa Senhora Suite) and the Choral Arts Initiative PREMIERE|Project Festival.
Returning to Chicago, where she lived in the 1990s, Witkowski is excited to coach jazz combos at ETHS this year. Experience her work at deannajazz.com.