Steve Sveum

Jazz II Studio Band Director | Wind Ensemble Retreat Co-Director | Sun Prairie, WI

Steve Sveum is the retired Director of Bands at Sun Prairie High School in Sun Prairie, WI, where he taught for 35 years. Jazz ensembles under his direction were selected thirteen times as finalists in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s “Essentially Ellington” national jazz competition, placing third three times. Sveum has been a faculty member of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Band Director Academy and has worked as a clinician at festivals around the United States. His Jazz Ensemble also performed at the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic with Wynton Marsalis. He is a 2014 recipient of the DownBeat Jazz Education Achievement Award. 

Since retiring, Sveum has remained active as a clinician, mentoring band directors and working with students around the country. As a member of Carter’s Jazz Clinics, he has worked on four virtual jazz festivals and spent a week working with bands in the Tampa Bay, Florida School District. Recently, he has worked with jazz and concert bands in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and Illinois at both the middle school, high school, and collegiate levels. He continues to be a consultant for Jazz at Lincoln Center. The 2024 season marks 21 years of Sveum’s teaching at Birch Creek’s summer music academy. Sveum also co-directs Birch Creek’s Wind Ensemble Retreat.