Biography

Dr. Keith Javors is an iconoclastic figure on today's international music scene, rare in his prolific accomplishments as both a music industry executive, producer, and artist as well as an award-winning clinician and educator.  Never compromising a strong dedication to excellence, Javors has seen success in nearly every facet of the modern music industry. From his unparalleled multiple, consecutive Downbeat magazine awards as a teacher and bandleader to the cutting edge leadership behind his award-winning global imprint Inarhyme Records to his natural aptitudes as a profound and soulful player and composer, Javors does it all, and he does it all at an undisputedly high level.  Not by his own admittance, Jazz Review says “It takes a musician’s true artistic love and commitment to the art to really peer through his or her music to find this type of end.”

Keith is President and CEO of the Inarhyme Music Group, LLC, a top-shelf Indie record label and music production company producing critically-acclaimed releases and concert collaborations throughout North America and abroad. The label has garnished consistent media praise since 2008 by top periodicals ranging from Jazz Times to the Chicago Tribune for its exceptional production quality.  Inarhyme’s releases feature such leading artists as the Hamburg Jazz Radio Orchestra, Tom Harrell, Boris Kozlov, Chris Potter, Terell Stafford, E.J. Strickland, Ben Williams, Steve Wilson, and many others. In addition to their range of 360-degree music industry services, the Inarhyme Music Group has a strong philanthropic underpinning as well, assisting in providing pro bono instruments and instruction to individuals and groups, from elementary schools to prisons.  Inarhyme was named as the top record label in Philadelphia in the Best of Philadelphia Awards for 2019.

Described by Jazz Hall of Fame saxophonist Bunky Green as a “creative force with an urgent message that cannot be denied”, Keith is a riveting player and live performer, visceral and communicative in his ballad playing and transformative in his creativity and dynamic sensibilities. He can be heard on several emotive recordings as a leader: Mantra, From Here To The Street, Mo’ City Jungle, The Free Project, Coming Together, Rhyme and Reason, and On the Bright Side with the American Music Project and Good To You with Blessing Osazuwa.  The Meeting is with Russian saxophonist Oleg Kireyev and features jazz luminaries Tom Harrell, Ben Williams, and E.J. Strickland. One jazz connoisseur in Moscow summed it up like this: “There are many musicians who play brilliantly from their head, but Keith is rare in that he comes straight from the heart.”

Javors graduated with distinction from both the University of North Texas (performing for two years in the coveted One O' Clock Lab Band) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was named five times to the Incomplete List of Teachers Ranked as Outstanding By Their Students.  Moving quickly through the academic ranks, Javors directed and brought the University of North Florida Jazz Ensemble 1 back into international prominence as a professor there in the early 2000s, the group being to-date the only collegiate big band in to have won the Best College Big Band category for multiple years in a row.

Over the years, Keith’s ensembles have performed at major festivals, clubs, and performance spaces around the globe: The Rockefeller Center, the International House of Music in Moscow, Jubilee Festival at Piwnica pod Baranami, North Sea Jazz Festival, Yaroslavl Jazz Festival, Montreux Jazz Festival, Vienne Jazz Festival, numerous International Association for Jazz Education Conferences, the Midwest Clinic; Blues Alley, Smalls, the Jazz Showcase, Chris' Jazz Café, Union of Composers Club, Smoke, the Iridium, Caravan of Dreams, and many others.  He has worked in collaboration with a literal who’s who of leading artists including Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, Terence Blanchard, Dave Brubeck, George Coleman, Kenny Garrett, Slide Hampton, the Heath Brothers, Eddie Henderson, Dave Holland, Pat Martino, Gerry Mulligan, Eddie Palmieri, Chris Potter, Sam Rivers, Maria Schneider, and Clark Terry, to name a few.

Dr. Javors is rare in the degree of his success not only as a producer and artist, but equally as a charismatic, award-winning music educator, speaker, and industry consultant. A distinguished graduate of the University of North Texas (B.M., M.M. Jazz Studies) and the first graduate of the University of Illinois Jazz Pedagogy program (Ed.D. Music Education), he has held successful teaching positions at UNT, UIUC, Eastern Illinois University, the University of North Florida, and the Settlement Music School. His past students have won Grammys, occupy positions in major symphonies and jazz orchestras, lead as esteemed administrators and college professors, or are successful working professionals in a host of other fields.  A gifted diagnostician, Javors is highly sought-after as a guest artist and clinician for schools, groups, and organizations throughout the United States and abroad because of his ability to achieve real and instantaneous results. Jazz Times says "The degree of hard work, patience, study, blood, sweat and tears necessary to produce a band of this quality is phenomenal."

Keith continues to push the artistic envelope with surprising and refreshing results. New York City Jazz Journalist Russ Musto (AllAboutJazz) probably said it best: “Keith is one who certainly can and does, traveling a high road that steers clear of the Ivory Towers and chooses instead more interesting places.”  To usher in his 50th birthday in 2021, Javors announced plans for his defining collection of original music to date, a massive, transparent, semi-auto-biographical work entitled, “Story." With these changes, Inarhyme Music Publishing and Inarhyme Records are now part of the greater Inarhyme Music Group, LLC.