Nathan Borton

Hailing from Wichita, Kansas, Nathan Borton is a Michigan-based Jazz guitar player who draws heavily from the midwestern tradition of bebop and the blues. His studies and performances have taken him across the United States from Brevard, North Carolina to East Lansing, Michigan, and everywhere in-between. Nathan served as the Teaching Assistant for the nationally acclaimed Jazz Studies program at Michigan State University under the direction of Rodney Whitaker during his Graduate Degree. There he studied guitar under the tutelage of the great Randy Napoleon.
Nathan has played with and alongside names such as: Rodney Whitaker, Michael Dease, Paul Keller, Diego Rivera, and Tom Knific. He has also performed at various music festivals including: the Detroit Jazz Festival, the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival, the East Lansing Jazz Festival, the Michigan Jazz Festival, and the Wichita Jazz Festival.
Recently, Nathan was a winner of the 2019 Wilson Center International Guitar Competition located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as well as placing as a finalist in 2018. He won two Downbeat awards in 2019 for Best Graduate Jazz Soloist and Best Live Engineering/Production, as well as winning the Paul Carr Discovery Act Award in 2020 with the Sencalar/Glassman Quintet.
Nathan is also an avid educator of music. He currently teaches at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI and at Hope College, in Holland, MI. Nathan has also taught and mentored at various camps around the nation such as: The Brevard Jazz Institute in Brevard, North Carolina and The Spectrum Music Camp in East Lansing, Michigan.
Nathan is a proud endorser of Benedetto Guitars in Savannah, GA.