Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Dean Crocker has spent his entire life involved in musical endeavors of one form or another. Piano lessons began at the age of six but were sometimes only background to the perceived necessity of learning violin, flute, trombone, and organ. But piano was the instrument that took hold and wouldn’t let go.
Dean attended Texas Christian University, then transfered to the University of North Texas (at that time called North Texas State University) where he earned a Bachelor and Master of Music in Composition while studying with Merrill Ellis and working in the Electronic Music Center (now called the Center for Experimental Music & Intermedia). He was fortunate to obtain graduate assistantships teaching orchestration, electronic music synthesis and composition. His final year at North Texas he was actually a part-time faculty member! During this period, Dean was regularly performing with marching bands, symphony orchestras, jazz groups, rock combos, chamber ensembles and church choirs. He also began a lengthy involvement with musical theater as a pianist, musical director and conductor.
Dean has processed, arranged, engraved, or simplified many other people’s music, from professional work on traditional sheet music and text books by major publishers to the oft necessary scaling down of orchestral parts for low-budget summer stock productions. Learning to write, organize, and maintain web sites presented him with an opportunity to avoid writing actual music for a while but now he can share his compositions with the larger public and experiment with a simple distribution system designed for the 21st century: 
Copyright © 2022 Dean Crocker d/b/a CROCKER MUSIC
All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced, photocopied, stored on a retrieval system, or transmitted without the express written consent of the publisher or the authors.
Last modified: Mon Oct 03 12:35 CDT 2022
