Mike Shellans

Mike Shellans, Associate Teaching Professor Emeritus, has retired from Arizona State University.

Mike Shellans is a retired professional performer and music educator in the Phoenix area, joining the Arizona State University music faculty in 1985. Shellans received his Bachelor's Degree in Jazz and Contemporary Media from the University of Arizona in 1979 and his Master's Degree in Trombone Performance from Arizona State University in 1990. Prior to ASU, Shellans also taught at Glendale Community College, Grand Canyon University, Paradise Valley Community College and Phoenix College.

Shellans played both piano and trombone since the age of nine and started working professionally while still in high school. Shellans has performed on piano or trombone with a wide variety of entertainers including Bob Hope, Donna Summer, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, George Burns, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Henry Mancini, Johnny Mathis, Kenny Rogers, Liberace, Louis Bellson, Micky Dolenz (Monkees), Natalie Cole, Red Skelton, Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus, Robert Goulet, Sammy Davis Jr., The Four Tops, The Ice Capades, The Moody Blues, The O’Jays, The Temptations, Yanni and Wayne Newton. He has also played in pit orchestras for musicals such as 42nd Street, Annie, Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Bye Bye Birdie, Camelot, Chorus Line, Damn Yankees, Jesus Christ, Superstar, Oklahoma, Pal Joey, The Music Man, The Mystery of Edwin Drood,The Sound of Music, West Side Story and Zorba the Greek. 

While an Associate Teaching Professor at ASU, Shellans taught sixteen different courses to more than 100,000 students, including Concert Jazz Band, Contemporary Music and Society, Jazz Combo, Jazz Fundamentals, Jazz Improvisation, Jazz in America, Jazz Piano, Jazz Styles and Analysis, Jazz/Rock Ensemble, Modern Arranging and Popular Music/Rock.  Shellans also created, helped design and taught Beatles, Blues to Heavy Metal, Elvis, The Beatles After the Beatles and Women Who Rock, fully online courses with a total annual enrollment of more than 3,000 students.  

For more than twenty years, Shellans was involved as a clinician and adjudicator with the Arizona Music Educators Association and the Arizona Band and Orchestra Directors Association.  Shellans served as head judge for the All-State High School Jazz Band Festivals, Jazz piano adjudicator for All-State High School Jazz Band piano auditionees and as a visiting Jazz clinician at high schools throughout Arizona. 

Shellans was engaged as a Popular Music book reviewer for Bloomsbury Academic and Oxford University Press, and contributed the article "Here Come the Sons", discussing the Beatles' musical progeny, to i-5 Magazine.  In 1997, Shellans co-authored the book "Here To Stay: Rock and Roll Through the ’70s", and a second text in 2007, "Who is the Greatest: Elvis or the Beatles?".   Both books are available at various online book sellers and in eBook format through the ASU Bookstore.