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 award-winning musicological research centers constructions in drag vocal performance on albums and EPs, reality television competitions, opera and multi-media art projects, and on the Broadway stage. Morgan presented their paper "Vocal Transcendence: Performing and Perceiving Transgender and Gender-Expansive Drag Vocal Performance" on the historic "Transauralities" panel at the 2023 AMS conference in Denver, CO. In previous projects, notably their widely-downloaded master's thesis, Morgan explores materiality and musical constructions of queer and racial identities in Janelle Monáe's Dirty Computer. This past summer, they taught the undergraduate course "LGBTQ Perspectives in Popular Music," a course cross listed within UCLA's departments of musicology and LGBTQ Studies. Morgan also writes program notes for the Oregon Mozart Players and the Tucson Symphony Orchestra.

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. 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's small ensemble work with the UCLA Trumpet Ensemble recently earned third place in the ITG's Ryan Anthony Memorial Trumpet Competition Chamber Division. They have also worked with numerous esteemed ensembles, including the Eugene Symphony, 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, attending drag shows, and playing with their cats, Reggie and Huey.