Dave Staples is a veteran East Coast music educator and performer and maintains a busy freelance career as a pianist, trombonist, composer, clinician, adjudicator and recording artist. He is recently retired from the Halifax Regional School Board where he taught instrumental band music for 35 years and is also a co-founder and director of the Nova Scotia Honour Jazz program, which has worked with talented students of jazz in Nova Scotia for the last 20 years.