It’s 7:30 in the morning and music is already filling the University of Michigan School of Music. Students from as far as Traverse City, Michigan and Columbus, Ohio have made the journey to Ann Arbor. Waking up as early as 2:00 am, they jump into busses, trains, and vans.
This is the U of M Jazz festival.
A noncompetitive event inviting high school and college jazz bands to U of M to play, learn, and listen. The festival’s theme was “Charles Mingus Day” and was split into three main events – big band workshops, combo workshops, and workshops open to all participants.
Instrument specific workshops throughout the day given by U of M faculty showed many young musicians what the next steps to becoming professional are. Exercises like overtones, ear training, and transcriptions were talked about in almost all the workshops.
Alex Patten, a trumpet player from Community High described the trumpet workshop he attended. “[Ed Sarath] offered lots of good advice. Not all of it was necessarily about trumpet specifics, but more about how to think about improvisation. [Sarath] is a great player and definitely gave everyone in the room something to think about.”
Another highlight to the day was a talk by Christian McBride, Robert Hurst, and moderator Linda Yohn called “Charles Mingus: The Man and Music”.
Adrian Koch, a Community High bassist, said, “The talk was amazing. [McBride and Hurst] told lots of great stories. Charles Mingus is one of my favorite bass players and I learned so much about him that I did not know.”
21 schools were invited to the festival including Pioneer, Michigan State, and Ohio State.
Community high sent three of its advanced Jazz combos to the festival; Maxed Out!, New Jazz, and Blue Connotation. All three bands had a 45-minute workshop with Andrew Bishop, the Assistant Professor of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation at U of M. Each combo played two or three songs and then got to work with Bishop.
Blue Connotation was the first Community band to play at 8:00 in the morning. They performed Roll Call by Hank Mobley and Blue Monk by Thelonious Monk.
“We played great today,” said Kyle Morrison, the tenor saxophonist from Blue Connotation. “The solos were better than in practice from everyone in the group. We had one big mess up but we recovered from it quickly.”
Next up for Community was Maxed Out!, starting at a much more convenient 1:00. They took on the challenge of playing Spain by Chick Corea and Pfrancing by Miles Davis. Max Bowen, the group’s guitarist extraordinaire, said, “As a group we played above average.”
Commenting on Maxed Out!’s performance, Bishop said “Well, Jack Wagner (band director for CHS) makes my job easy.”
Last for Community High was New Jazz. They played Adams Apple by Wayne Shorter, Ben’s Blues written by their own guitarist, Ben Pernick, and Joshua by Victor Feldman.
The next festival for all five of Community’s advanced jazz combos is the Western Michigan Jazz Festival, on March 13th.
