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Robert Athayde

Recognized for his outstanding teaching and musicianship, Bob Athayde has garnered a number of awards including the Gil Freitas Outstanding Music Educator Award,  (1989), the Diablo Symphony Association's Distinguished Music Educator Award (1995), Charles Schwab's Teach Each Distinguished Teacher Award, the Prudential Realty Outstanding Teacher Award (1999), the AC5 Arts Recognition Award (2003), and the KDFC Outstanding Music Educator Award (2004). Bob was recently awarded the California Music Educator's Don Schmeer, Outstanding Band Teacher of California Award. 

He received his B.A. in Music and a teaching credential in 1975 from CSUEB (then known as Cal State Hayward), and has also completed work toward a Masters Degree in Kodaly Music at Holy Names College in Oakland. He studied jazz piano with Mike Nock, Bill Bell, Don Haas, and Carl Eberhard, and trumpet with Anthony Caviglia, Phil Shoptaugh, and Marvin Nelson. He joined the CSU East Bay Music Jazz Faculty in fall, 2012.

Additionally, Athayde was the featured guest artist/clinician on trumpet and piano at the Cal State Stanislaus Jazz Festival, and a clinician at the UC Berkeley Jazz Festival. For the past three years, Athayde has traveled to the Sitka Jazz Festival in Alaska as performer/clinician, playing with such well known artists as Paquito d'Rivera, Claudio Roditi and Steve Turre, and John Clayton. In addition to his teaching jazz piano at California State University, East Bay, Athayde is also Music Director at Stanley Intermediate School in Lafayette (since 1986), teaches private lessons (trumpet and piano), performs with other professional musicians and his own commercial band, Surefire, runs a summer jazz camp, the Lafayette Summer Music Workshop, adjudicates for various music festivals around the Bay Area, guest teaches and conducts. Each year he teaches jazz improvisation and conducts orchestras for one of the Suzuki Music Institutes in Stanford, Utah, and Hawaii.

Recently, Bob Athayde has ventured into recording CDs of his own performances on jazz piano, backed by bass and drums, and featuring his son, Kyle, on trumpet and vibes. His newest CD,  A Second Look, recorded in early 2004, was preceded by First Takes, enthusiastically received in 2001. While he still holds some lingering admiration for Herb Albert, Athayde points to Horace Silver, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Monty Alexander, and Freddie Hubbard as the greatest musical influences in his life.

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