Three jazz students win solo awards
The Utah State University Jazz Orchestra did something it has never done before: It brought home three solo wins from the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival.
“We’ve been going for about 15 years, and this is the first time we’ve ever had more than one winner,” said Larry Smith, the group’s director. “So these kids are really exceptional.”
Josh Skinner, a senior majoring in music education, beat nine other bass players to win the category. His wife, Kate Proudfit Skinner, took first of 14 in the vocalist category. And Jesse Schafer, a senior in guitar performance, won in the guitar solo category, surpassing nine competitors for his win.
The Skinners met four years ago while taking a jazz improvisational class. They’ve been married since last summer and enjoy having their music in common. They formed a jazz combo soon after they met and play together at weddings and parties.
“I like being married to someone who can relate to me musically,” Kate said. “It’s cool that we can relate to each other in that way.”
This is the second year in a row that Kate, a senior studying liberal arts and sciences, has won the vocal solo category. Smith has been leading the orchestra for 37 years, and Kate is only the fourth person he’s allowed to sing with the group.
“She’s been singing for us since I first heard her,” Smith said. “She’s sung at every concert she’s been with us. She’s just a terrific singer.”
Kate, who also plays the piano in the band, started singing for it by chance, Smith said.
“She was going to take piano lessons from me, and she said, ‘Well, I usually sing.’ So I said, ‘Sing away.’ Now we always have her sing.”
Josh started playing the bass in middle school because a lot of his friends were beginning to play various instruments, and he decided to join them, he said.
“It’s the best thing I ever could have done,” he said.
Josh got his start with the USU Jazz Orchestra when Smith heard him playing classical music in a practice room and told him to try out for the band. He did and has been playing jazz with the group ever since.
“I just love to play music regardless of whether it’s jazz or classical. I just love playing my instrument,” he said.
Josh learned he’d won after Kate and Schafer’s names popped up on the screen as winners,
“I knew Kate was going to win; she’s just good,” he said. “I was pretty shocked at first when I saw my name. Then it sunk in and I was just really excited.
Schafer, a senior studying guitar performance, competed in the solo competition for the third time this year. And like the saying goes, third time’s the charm. Smith said Schafer, who performed three songs at the competition, won because he was well prepared.
“He worked really hard. He’s just a good, solid bass player,” he said. “He was just really well prepared and sounded really good.”
Although he’s been performing since he was a child, Schafer still gets sick every time he performs in front of large groups, and the festival in Moscow was no different, he said.
“I’m always nervous when I have to play in front of an audience. You just learn to deal with it,” he said. “There were several thousand at the festival, and I almost threw up. But I didn’t, thank God. That would have been disastrous.
Schafer started playing his instrument about seven years ago when he picked up a guitar his grandfather had given his mom.
“I just decided to pick it up one day and haven’t stopped,” Schafer said.
Since that time, he has played with more bands than he can count.
“I’ll play with just about anyone who will play with me,” he said.
Schafer said the guitar is special because its sound is so versatile.
“It’s a very diverse instrument,” he said. “It doesn’t have to sound like any one thing; you can get so many different sounds from one instrument.”
Schafer said jazz is his favorite style to play, but he also enjoys blues, funk and soul. Some days, he practices upwards of eight hours.
“You basically surrender your life to it, but it’s worth it if you’re devoted,” he said.
The festival was held Feb. 19 to 22 at the University of Idaho, and more than 18,000 students of all ages learned from some of the best jazz musicians in the world. The annual festival is the only competition the band participates in because Smith doesn’t like the students missing any more school than that, he said.
The orchestra practices for an hour three days a week. It performs four concerts a year at USU. The next is on April 16 in the Kent Concert Hall. Professional musicians from New York are coming to play with the band.
–kcartwright@cc.usu.edu
Jesse Schafer performs “Blues for Space Cadets” in the Morgan Theatre during a performance on March 4. Schafer has been with the USU Jazz Orchestra for four years and earned first place at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival at the University of Idaho.
Kate Proudfit Skinner sings “I used to be Color Blind” to a crowd of students at the performance on March 4. She has been singing and playing the piano with the band for four years, and won the vocal solo competition at the festival in Moscow. (Photos by John Zsiray)