Thomas Keck

Thomas Keck serves as Director of the Division of Music in the SMU Meadows School of the Arts, where he is the chief academic and administrative officer of the division. Prior to this, Keck served as Chair of the Department of Music at Utah Valley University and had over 20 years of faculty experience as Director or Associate Director of bands at the Universities of Georgia, Miami, New Hampshire, Ball State and Utah Valley. In these roles, he oversaw concert and athletic band programs while mentoring undergraduate and graduate students.

At SMU, Keck oversees allocated and endowment budgets, while leading 95 faculty and staff in a top-tier music school offering undergraduate and graduate degrees and diplomas. He reallocated budgets to align with strategic financial priorities, hired and promoted faculty and staff from under-represented populations, revamped recruiting and social media initiatives, launched new degree programs, initiated curricular modernization, and supported technology and infrastructure acquisitions. Music matriculations have skyrocketed during Keck’s leadership, growing total enrollment by 30% and graduate enrollment by 70%. Among numerous administrative accomplishments at UVU, Keck raised the music department’s completion rate by 15 percentage points, exceeding the university’s outcome measure for 2025 four years in advance.

Keck has conducted at regional conferences of the CBDNA and NAfME in addition to high school all-state engagements. He held the unique distinction of being the first conductor to have their concert ensemble and marching band be invited to perform for the membership of the CBDNA in the same year. Keck has guest conducted the US Army Field Band, the US Air Force Band of the Golden West and has served as Assistant Conductor of the Greater Miami Symphonic Band. He has appeared with university and high school ensembles throughout the United States, Bahamas, Bermuda, Haiti, Mexico, Canada, Europe and China. While in Utah, Keck received acclaim for his 2018-19 season programming, inclUTion, which exclusively featured composers, performers and conductors from under-represented populations. 

Keck is a published author in nine volumes of the Teaching Music Through Performance in Band series, the leading compendium of wind band repertoire. Keck is also a contributing author to the recent rehearsal techniques textbook, What Would You Do? An Anthology and Methodology for the Development of Rehearsal Techniques for Band, and the leading marching band methods textbook, The System. For 25 years, Keck was a director and collegiate conducting curriculum designer at the Smith-Walbridge Clinics, the first summer training program for high school and college drum majors.

Keck holds a terminal degree in conducting from Arizona State University and music education degrees from the Universities of Illinois and Iowa. He also earned an M.A. in Higher Education Leadership with a concentration in fundraising leadership from Penn State University and credentials in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and anti-racist pedagogy from UVU. He has twice received the National Band Association Citation of Excellence and was included in the 20th annual School Band & Orchestra magazine 50 Directors Who Make a Difference.