John Hopkins

JOHN F. HOPKINS was appointed to Staff Musician for the TCU School of Classical & Contemporary Dance in August 2018. For 15 years prior to that he was accompanist for the school, with additional duties of assisting in other classes for dance pedagogy, career preparation and music for dancers. He also has composed or performed many pieces for choreography concerts, including works of students, faculty and guest artists. He produced an album of dance class music for Susan Douglas Roberts entitled “Tunes for Guatemala,” using live performance of computer-generated instruments. Prior to that, he spent 3 semesters in the department of physics, working on research in quantum statistical physics, taking classes and teaching astronomy laboratory sessions. Since 1974, he has tutored in mathematical subjects, particularly statistics, calculus and physics.

Since 1982, John has contributed to the musical experience of the congregation of Trinity Lutheran Church Fort Worth, by serving as interim and substitute choir director and organist/pianist, playing in an directing the hand bell choir and the Zimbabwe marimba bands, and performing solos with voice, marimba, violin, banjo and mandolin. This also involved creating many compositions and arrangements and teaching many lessons to students age 6 to adult.

He has also participated in several jazz projects, including the Ipanema Jazz Ensemble, played many events for Contemporary Dance Fort Worth in both concert and community outreach programs, and played violin and piano in the Fort Worth Civic Orchestra. For Justin Warren, an independent film producer, he created the musical soundtrack for the short film “Pain is Beauty.” With Dr. Paul Warren and Dr. Juan Hernandez, he performed in and helped produce the albums “Sweet Deliverance” and “Juan Hernandez,” respectively.

On the technical side again, he was a senior systems engineer on the Joint Strike Fighter program at Lockheed Martin, he did Macintosh platform software development for 10 years with The SU5 Group, Inc. in Fort Worth, and spent three years as technical analyst in F-16 structural engineering for General Dynamics, where he met his wife, Darlene.

In 1982, he graduated magna cum laude from TCU with a bachelor of science in mathematics, with related studies in computer science and Russian language. As a continuation of his senior research paper on digital signal processing and music printing, he designed and implemented the Stavewriter music printing system for the Fairlight Computer Musical Instrument, which included two years abroad in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He was valedictorian of Southwest High School in 1974.