Director of Performance Music
Coordinator of Applied Music
Music Director, Symphony of the Canyons

K.C. began her music studies in high school as a jazz bass player and has enjoyed an eclectic career touring with the Woody Herman band, Art Pepper Trio, and with twice voted jazz drummer of the year and former drummer with the Dave Brubeck quartet, Joe Morello. She spent four years serving as Kent Nagano's assistant conductor with the Berkeley Symphony and the Oakland Symphony Orchestra Association. During her tenure with these organizations, K.C. has the opportunity to study and perform Oliver Messiaen's music with Messiaen himself in attendance and she assisted in preparing the chorus for the ambitions West Coast premiere of Transfiguration De Notre Seigneur Jesus Christ. K.C. spent a term at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute studying with Maestro Leonard Bernstein, the music director of the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas, and former Boston Symphony Pops conductor John Williams. K.C. has also studied extensively with San Francisco Ballet Music Director Denis De Coteau and Peter Eros, former director of the Alborg Symphony in Australia and the current Conductor in Residence at the University of Washington in Seattle. During her tenure as the Music Director of the Sinfonia Concertante Orchestra of Manhattan, she worked with Pulitzer Prize winning composer Ellen Taffe Zwilich, and renowned music educator, conductor, author and composer Gunther Schuller.

K.C. has also performed with Frank Zappa, Ronnie Montrose, John Davidson, Elizabeth McGovern, Richie Cole, Sheila E, and Jay Leno's Tonight Show Band percussionist Vicki Randall. She is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the San Bernadino Arts Association, International Jazz Educators Association, Association of California Symphony Orchestras, American Symphony League, Conductor's Guild of America, Music Association of California Community Colleges, and the California Teachers Association.

K.C. Manji has enjoyed a successful career as Director of Instrumental Music at Victor Valley College since 1990 and is the founding music director of the Victor Valley Symphony Orchestra. She continues to travel as a guest conductor for film, television, commercials, festival adjudicator, and clinician.