Sully’s Reputation Amid a jazz career that’s catching fre, Sullivan Fortner ’08 returns to his roots. BY DANIEL HAUTZINGER ’16 PHOTO BY TANYA ROSEN-JONES ’97
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Count Sullivan Fortner among those who have noticed how remarkable Oberlin students can be. Te 28-year-old pianist experienced it frsthand during the spring of 2015, when he served as the sabbatical replacement for his own mentor, Associate Professor of Jazz Piano Dan Wall. “Everybody is thinking on higher levels all the time,” Fortner says during an April conversation in his airy ofce in the Bertram and Judith Kohl Building. “If the teacher doesn’t know what he’s talking about, the students will let you know.” But if anyone knows what he’s talking about, it’s Fortner. Te New Orleans native just won the 2015 Cole Porter Fellowship in Jazz, with a prize package worth $100,000. In 2012,