Marcus Anthony Shelby is a composer/bassist who currently lives in San Francisco, California. His work focuses on the history, present, and future of African American lives, social movements, and music education. In 1990, Marcus Shelby received the Charles Mingus Scholarship to attend Cal Arts and study composition with James Newton and bass with Charlie Haden. Currently, Shelby is an artist in residence with the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival.

Shelby has composed several oratorios including Harriet Tubman, Beyond the Blues: A Prison Oratorio, and Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and an opera Harriet’s Spirit produced by Opera Parallel 2018. Shelby also composed the score and performed in Anna    Deavare Smith’s off Broadway Play and HBO     feature film Notes From The Field and has also worked on a range of productions, such as Joanna Haigood’s Dying While Black and Brown (2014), Margo Hall’s Bebop Baby (2013) and Sonny’s Blues (2008), the Oakland Ballet’s Ella The SF Girls Choir (2013), The Oakland Youth Chorus (2014), and many other productions over the past 21 years. Shelby has served on the San Francisco Arts Commission since 2013.