Angela M. Wellman is an award-winning trombonist, scholar, music educator, and activist. She began playing trombone in elementary school and began playing professionally at age 18 and after two decades she turned her attention to her main passion-teaching. In 2005 she founded the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music (OPC) to ensure that Black children and adults have access to culturally resonant, affordable music education. OPC centers Blackness in the development of American musical culture and identity and since opening its doors 16 years ago, has become one of the Bay Area’s vanguard institutions in community music education and cultural preservation. Angela is a recipient of multiple local and national awards including the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Study Fellowship, the City of Oakland “Cultural Key to the City,” the“Jazz Hero Award” from the Jazz Journalists Association, the Arhoolie Award from the Arhoolie Foundation, the 2020 Caffie M. Greene Community Building Award from UPSurge! NY, and the County of Alameda 2021 Arts Leadership Award. Angela completed undergraduate studies at the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri’s Kansas City and received a Master’s degree in Music Education from the Eastman School of Music. She is presently completing her dissertation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where her research explores the impact of racism and white supremacy on access to music education for Black students.
https://myiwbc.org/angela-wellman/