In 2021, Gamaliel Harris was a Choctaw High School senior trying to balance varsity football, jazz band, honors classes and everything else that came with being a teenager on the Emerald Coast.
- Five years later, he has been accepted into the Juilliard School’s Master of Music program in jazz tenor trombone, one of only two trombonists selected nationwide for the 2026-27 academic year.
What makes the acceptance all the more remarkable is that Harris doesn’t hold a bachelor’s degree in music. He earned his undergraduate degree in pre-physical therapy from Florida A&M University. The trombone, for most of his college career, was something he did on the side. But a series of pivotal moments and a refusal to let anyone talk him out of his ambitions carried him from a high school band room to an audition stage in New York City.
“There were a lot of awesome things that led to this in those five years, since I started taking music seriously after the interview happened,” Harris said.
That interview was a 2021 Get The Coast profile that explored how Harris juggled football and band at Choctaw. Shortly after it was published, his idol, New Orleans trombonist Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews, saw the video (thanks to the efforts of Guidance Counselor Katie White) and sent Harris a signed copy of his album “For True.” It was the same album that made Harris want to play trombone in the first place.
On the signed album, Andrews wrote that he couldn’t wait to hear Harris soon. It’s a message Harris has carried with him ever since.
- “In the back of my mind, I’m always like, I’m gonna work hard because I know that I will play with him at one point,” he said.
His father’s advice and a two-track plan
After graduation, Harris told his father he wanted to pursue music full time. His dad encouraged him to consider a more stable career path. The two agreed on a compromise: Harris would study physical therapy and continue playing music on the side. If something big happened musically, they’d revisit the plan.
Harris enrolled at Northwest Florida State College, where he spent two years earning his associate degree on the physical therapy track. But those two years also became the most formative of his musical life. He joined the college’s jazz ensemble under Fred Domulot, landed his first professional gig at a wedding in Destin that left him nervous but eager for more, and began playing at a local church where he had to rely on his ear because he never knew the set list ahead of time.
During his first year at Northwest, Harris entered a Pensacola student jazz competition. At 18, he was competing against musicians from local universities. He won.
- “Those first two years were the most important music-wise,” Harris said. “That’s when I really started learning about improv and what it is and just all the things that I didn’t know.”
Florida A&M and the performance that changed everything
Harris transferred to FAMU in the fall of 2023, where he met Robert Griffin, the university’s Director of Bands. Harris quickly became section leader of the jazz band and began performing at venues and events across Tallahassee and beyond: the state Capitol building, the governor’s mansion, the Florida Black Caucus and the city’s bicentennial celebration, where a photo of his quartet later ended up on street banners downtown.
He was selected for the HBCU All-Stars, traveling to Savannah, Georgia, to perform. He played alongside Delfeayo Marsalis in New Orleans. But the moment that redirected his life came at the Virginia Arts Festival in Norfolk, a competition hosted by Jazz at Lincoln Center that brings together the top HBCU jazz programs in the country.
FAMU was one of 12 bands selected. Harris won the Outstanding Trombone award, the Best Trombone Section award and the Adderley Brothers Outstanding Soloist Award, given to the top soloist from the entire festival. He then performed alongside Vincent Gardner, the trombonist from Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and a FAMU alumnus.
After the performance, Wynton Marsalis told Harris he sounded “ready to go on the road.”
- “I think it was that point where I really considered it,” Harris said. “If Wynton’s saying that, then I definitely have to change now, because we’ve got something here.”
People at the festival began telling him he should apply to Juilliard. At the time, Harris was weeks away from finishing his bachelor’s degree in pre-physical therapy. He had taken only a handful of music classes. But the message was clear.
“All the good things that happened at that event made me realize that this is what God is trying to show me,” he said. “Don’t think you can’t do it, because you have people that believe in you.”
Preparing for the audition of a lifetime
After graduating from FAMU in the summer of 2025, Harris moved to Florida State University to take music theory and performance classes in preparation for a Juilliard audition. Despite holding a bachelor’s degree, he was placed in undergraduate courses alongside freshmen. He didn’t let it deter him.
“Most of the stuff that they were talking about, I was already playing,” Harris said. “Now I was just putting words to it.”
The Juilliard application process took nearly a year. Harris had to record a prescreening video performing selections from a list of six to eight pieces, gather letters of recommendation and submit transcripts. Early in the process, he made a mistake, misunderstanding the submission requirements and sending videos of the wrong material. A Juilliard representative called him.
- “Usually we don’t do this,” Harris recalled being told. But because he had submitted before anyone else, demonstrating his seriousness, they gave him a second chance.
“It was that other shot that saved this whole thing,” he said. “Because if it was anybody else, they would’ve just looked past it.”
Harris was invited to audition in person. His audition date was March 3, the same date he had auditioned at FAMU years earlier. He even has side-by-side photos of himself walking to each audition, trombone case in hand.
He spent seven weeks preparing, practicing five hours a day on top of his coursework and gigs. The audition itself lasted an entire day: two rounds of performance before a panel of eight or nine judges, a music theory assessment and a sight-reading exercise written by Marsalis himself that stretched four pages long.
- “This was the most difficult piece of sight reading I’ve ever had in my entire life,” Harris said. He didn’t nail it, but he didn’t stop playing either. When he finished, the judges clapped.
Harris also submitted a creative project, an original composition called “When I Sleep” that featured him singing and playing over a New Orleans groove, recorded at FAMU. He wanted to show the faculty that even without a music degree, he could write.
Juilliard selected one trombonist for its master’s program this year. Harris was competing against an applicant who had already completed his bachelor’s at Juilliard.
March 31 in the library
Harris was told decisions would come out April 1. On March 31, he was sitting in the FSU library checking his email when a message appeared: Juilliard application status update.
“My heart just sank,” he said. “I read the letter. I could feel a little heartbeat come back, but I was still speechless. I was frozen in time.”
The first person he called was his father, who was home with Harris’ sister. His dad put them on a joint call with his mother, who was driving. Harris could hear them going crazy on the other end. He spent the rest of the day calling mentors, teachers and family.
“It’s weird because it hasn’t really even sank in yet,” he said.
‘He gave me that opportunity’
One of those calls went to Brad Parks, Harris’ former band director at Choctaw and the man Harris credits with giving him his first real chance.
Harris told the story of an experience during his freshman year, when he was overlooked for a solo during a rehearsal with another instructor. When Parks later heard him play on a piece called “Brooklyn,” he took notice.
- “He’s looking around, like, who’s this?” Harris said. “I just played the heck out of that song.”
Parks went on to help Harris navigate the demands of playing varsity football while staying in the band program, and he helped arrange the 2021 profile that led to the Trombone Shorty connection.
“You can’t always count on teachers to give you the opportunity like that,” Harris said. “Because he took that chance on me, he’s always had a special place in my heart.”
When Parks answered the phone, Harris said his former director was so proud and happy for him.
- “He was just so proud of me and how it was amazing to see me grow into this person that I am now,” Harris said.
What comes next
Harris, now 22, will head to New York this fall to begin his two-year master’s program at Juilliard. He said he wants to build a performing career, tour and eventually become a recording and sponsored artist. Down the road, he hopes to return to Northwest Florida as a college-level professor and teach, thanks to his time helping at Grow Your Gift Conservatory of Music in Fort Walton Beach.
“I feel like it all starts when I get up there in New York, because I have no idea what’s going to happen up there,” he said. “The sky’s the limit.”
Five years ago, Harris closed his first interview with a piece of advice: if you’re set on achieving a goal, don’t let anybody change your mind. Asked whether that philosophy still holds up, he didn’t hesitate.
- “When I told people I was looking at Juilliard, some of them tried to plant doubt,” he said. “Telling me New York is tough, telling me about other people who didn’t get in. Even friends. I just tuned all of that out.”
“If you keep your mind set on it, you can’t let anybody tell you differently. Just be comfortable in that unknown. If you just work knowing that your work won’t be in vain, then it makes it a little easier. It gives you a little more assurance and that courage to keep going.”
