Clarence Acox, co-director and drummer, was voted the 1992 Earshot Jazz Musician of the Year. He directs the award-winning Garfield High School Jazz Ensemble, and is among Seattle's busiest drummers. A native of New Orleans, he graduated from Southern University. His own sextet has won numerous awards for its CD recordings, Joanna's Dance and Indigenous Groove. Acox can also be heard as a regular member of the Floyd Standifer Group. He serves annually as a faculty artist for the renowned Bud Shank/Centrum Jazz Workshop.

In 2002 Clarence received national Educator of the Year Award from Down Beat magazine.

Michael Brockman, co-director and lead alto saxophonist, has been a faculty member of the UW School of Music since 1987, instructing in saxophone performance and jazz composition and arranging. He studied saxophone and composition at the New England Conservatory, the Berklee College of Music and the Musikhochschule in Cologne. He has recorded with groups in Washington D.C. and Boston, and with the Clarence Acox Sextet. An Evening of Duke Ellington at the UW, coordinated and directed by Brockman, was voted the 1992 Earshot Jazz Concert of the Year. For more information about Michael Brockman, including photos and links to magazine articles and interviews, go to http://faculty.washington.edu/brockman/.