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In the fall of 2024, Matthew Vangjel will begin teaching at the University of Missouri Kansas City. Matthew Vangjel was previously the Julian R. and Sidney Nicolle Carruth Associate Professor of Trumpet at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where he teaches trumpet and coaches chamber music. He also held positions at the University of Texas-San Antonio and the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith. Vangjel is a passionate music educator and frequently spends his free time teaching at camps and studying pedagogy. In the summer, he can be found at LSU’s Stately Oaks Summer Camp and coaching the National Youth Brass Band of America. He also taught at the University of Costa Rica’s brass camp, Foro Bronces 2017, in San Jose.

In addition to his current duties at LSU, Vangjel is an active performer locally and nationally. He was a member of the Mirari Brass Quintet (Ariel Artists) with whom he toured actively both in the United States and abroad for a decade. Most memorably, Mirari spent two weeks touring China and released its second album, renewed, reused, recycled. Vangjel is also a member of the internationally acclaimed Fountain City Brass Band (FCBB), a British-style brass band based in Kansas City, KS. He can be heard as solo flugelhorn on all of the FCBB albums and as a featured soloist on Over the Rainbow and Celtic Impressions.

Since the Summer of 2019, Vangjel has been principal trumpet of the Mobile Symphony Orchestra. He has also performed with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra, and the Kansas City Symphony. He has been called upon as a featured soloist with the Fort Smith Symphony, Northland Symphony Orchestra, and the Kansas City Civic Orchestra. His first solo album, Still and Quiet Places, was released by Summit Records in the Fall of 2019. As a soloist or member of chamber ensembles, Vangjel is a frequent performer at the International Trumpet Guild Conferences, the International Trombone Festival, the International Tuba and Euphonium Conference, and the North American Brass Band Association Championships.  

Vangjel studied at the University of Missouri - Kansas City (DMA), the University of Michigan (MM), and James Madison University (BM- Music Education). His primary teachers include Keith Benjamin, Bill Campbell, Jim Kluesner, and Nancy Taylor. He loves making music with his trumpet-playing wife, Jena, and family hiking trips with his daughter, Isla, and dob, Beaux.

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