USU jazz players visit the Big Apple
International Association for Jazz Education conference hosted in the “big apple” to learn from some of the great jazz players of our time, said Thomas Brecheisen, a junior majoring in music education.
The trip started at the beginning of the month on Jan. 9 when they flew from Salt Lake City to New York, where the conference started the next day.
Matt Bailey, a junior majoring in saxophone performance, said, “It was awesome to be at the conference to learn more about jazz, because New York is like the capital for jazz.”
From Jan. 10 to Jan. 13, the combo spent the four days listening to many groups perform as well as attending clinics that taught them many things about teaching and playing jazz.
Brecheisen said the days were packed full. The group got up around 8 a.m, walked a block away from their hotel in Manhattan to the conference and were immersed in jazz all day long. Their day ended with professional concerts held nightly in the early morning hours around 1:30 to 2 a.m.
Each day the band members spent time in clinics that covered a wide variety of jazz education and jazz performance topics, Bailey said. He said there were classes taught by jazz professionals for each instrument. Bailey said a highlight for him was meeting and getting a picture with one of his favorite saxophone players Ormette Coleman.
About half the time, there were groups from all over the nation performing for everyone who came. Bailey said a couple of groups from Utah came: a vocal group from BYU and another band from a local high school.
“Someday I hope that USU will have a band good enough to send to an IAJE conference,” he said.
To help off set the cost of the trip, the six band members received $400 from ASUSU and another $100 from a jazz scholarship given out by the music department. “ASUSU was excited to have a group represent Utah State at the conference, so they were willing to help us out,” Bailey said.
The other half of the money came from the pockets of the band members.
According to the IAJE Web site, the organization is made up of jazz professionals and is dedicated to the continued the growth and development of jazz throughout the world. Each year it hosts a conference like this one. Next year the conference will be held in Toronto, and Brecheisen said he hopes to have a group from USU attend.
Bailey said jazz is a style of music that is always developing and changing and the experience at the conference helped him to stay on top of what’s new in jazz.
“As I listened to the music, it was like one epiphany after another of things I could try.”
Brecheisen said the main goal of attending the conference was to learn more techniques to teach jazz as well as applying them to get the form of music more popular among the USU students.
He said he and the other music majors of the band want USU to have a program specifically for jazz, so they decided to start a student chapter of IAJE as a club to help the ball start rolling.
Right now USU doesn’t have the classes to offer a jazz degree, but as the club gets going, Brecheisen said the hope is that the program will grow. He, along with professor Jon Gudmundson, is working to get membership and dues worked out so the club can start holding meetings next month. Once the club is started, Brecheisen said, professionals from IAJE will come as guest speakers to USU to teach the students and give tips to make it in the professional world. All of this, he said, is to help jazz at USU improve.
“Once we have a program that can entice people to come to here, then our bands will get better and maybe someday even be good enough play at the IAJE conference,” Brecheisen said.
-dwkoecher@cc.usu.edu