About | Morgan Bates

Morgan Bates is a trumpeter, musicologist, and educator based in Los Angeles, California. Morgan is currently a PhD student and Cota-Robles Fellow at UCLA studying Musicology with a concentration in Gender Studies. A member of the UCLA trumpet studio, Morgan serves as a teaching artist at the Heart of Los Angeles with the LA Philharmonic's Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA) program and performs as a freelance musician throughout the west coast.

Morgan's evolving dissertation project explores the performance realm of "drag vocality" across musical genres, positioning drag as an artistic tool for resistance under structures of cisheterosexism, white supremacy, and capitalism. Outside of their dissertation work, Morgan has extended their interests in vocality and materiality to queer and trans popular music over the past century, including Janelle Monáe's Dirty Computer, which they center in their widely-downloaded master's thesis, "Performing Power, Pursuing Pause." They have presented their work at national and regional conferences of the American Musicological Society, as well as conferences for the Harvard Graduate Music Forum, International Association for the Study of Popular Music, Society for American Music, and Music and Moving Image. Morgan also TAs and teaches coursework at UCLA and writes program notes for the Oregon Mozart Players, Tucson Symphony Orchestra, and Los Angeles Brass Alliance.

Morgan's performance experience spans widely across genres, from orchestral settings and contemporary chamber works to electronic noise music. As a trumpet soloist, Morgan has performed as a featured soloist with the Oregon Mozart Players, the UCLA Wind Ensemble, and twice as a concerto competition winner with the Dickinson College Orchestra. Additionally, Morgan has collaborated with composers, artists, and creators across the country on projects ranging from commissions to sound art on multi-media productions, including a recent commission Sonatina Scherzo written by Joseph Vranas, forthcoming chamber commission by Webster Gadbois, and a noise-music duet collaboration with J.P. Lempke. They have also performed as a sound artist in the Eugene Difficult Music Ensembles Eugene Garbage Project and in Dr. Ana-Maurine Lara's Sanctuary, A Performance, directed by D'Lo.

As an ensemble performer, Morgan previously held the positions of Second Trumpet in the Oregon Mozart Players and Third Trumpet with the Rogue Valley Symphony before relocating to Los Angeles for their doctoral studies. Morgan is a proud member of the UCLA Trumpet Studio, the Los Angeles Brass Alliance, and the Gay Freedom Band of Los Angeles. They have also performed with numerous esteemed ensembles up and down the west coast (and beyond), including the Eugene Symphony, Symphony San Jose, Orchestra Next, Newport Symphony, Eugene Difficult Music Ensemble, Oregon Brass Quintet, Eugene Opera, and Sinfonietta Polonia of Poznan, Poland.

A passionate teacher and learner, Morgan earned their Master of Music in Trumpet Performance, Master of Arts in Musicology, and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Graduate Certificate from the University of Oregon in 2021. Morgan received their Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude with departmental honors and a minor in religion from Dickinson College. Morgan has received musical training from world-class musicians, such as Jens Lindemann, Brian McWhorter, Sarah Viens, Jeffrey Wohlbach, James Martin, and Jonathan Hays. Outside of music, Morgan is an avid mental health and disability rights advocate, and they been involved in anti-death penalty activism for well over a decade. A proud Yelp Elite Squad Member, Morgan also enjoys exploring cuisines of Los Angeles, traveling and theorizing with their wife, attending drag shows, and playing with their cats, Reggie and Huey.