Dr. Karim Yengsep
Founder & Director
Qazaq-American bassist and music educator Dr. Karim Yengsep began his studies of music at an early age. After coming to the United States in 2000 as an international student he enrolled at Western Oregon University (BA in Music/Computer Science ’05) and later continued his studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Master of Music ’09 and Doctor of Musical Arts ’12) as a recipient of highly competitive tuition waiver scholarship awards from both WOU and UIUC.
While in graduate school, Karim executive produced, arranged, and performed on Bossa Nuevo (TC-2021) an album carrying his band’s name, which was released by Teal Creek Music and has recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. His doctoral project focused on the work of American jazz bassist Doug Watkins and culminated with four lecture-recitals and an essay entitled Analysis of Solo Vocabulary in the Improvisations of Bassist Doug Watkins.
Upon successfully completing his doctoral studies, he returned to his native Kazakhstan and held administrative and teaching positions at various colleges and universities advancing from Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and then to Docent of Music (Associate Professor) within the span of three academic years. Additionally, he authored thirty radio-essays in a program called Jazz Review for national radio. All in all, throughout his academic career, Karim has worked every step of the educational process from teaching music elementary through graduate school levels, to running the back office of an established Chicago violin school as administrative director or managing the student affairs department at one of the top universities in Central Asia.
In 2015, Karim immigrated to the United States and after first landing in Chicago, Illinois, moved with his family to Southern California in 2018. Here he set out to realize his lifelong passion of creating a community jazz education program that addressed the needs of often overlooked groups in the music education process -- youth and adult learners -- at the street level. SoCal Jazz Academy was registered with the State of California in January 2019. In addition to his administrative duties, Karim teaches beginning-advanced students, runs combos, and directs the flagship Jazz Repertory Ensemble -- a big band consisting of students and community members.
In the short time that Karim has spent in Southern California, he has performed side by side with many notable jazz artists and took stage at LA's Peacock Theater and Catalina Jazz Club, legendary Lighthouse Cafe in Hermosa Beach, Jazzville in Palm Springs, Mozambique in Laguna Beach, Bayside in Newport Beach, and many other local venues. In addition, he built out the Friday Night Jazz series from the ground up at OC Fish Grill in the heart of Irvine, where he leads his quintet every Friday night for over 2 years.
After 20 years of first arriving to the United States, Karim became a naturalized US citizen in August 2021.