Faculty Jazz Ensemble Concert rescheduled for November

The UNL Faculty Jazz Ensemble performs at the Montreux International Jazz Festival. Photo by Dominique Schreckling.
The UNL Faculty Jazz Ensemble performs at the Montreux International Jazz Festival. Photo by Dominique Schreckling.

Faculty Jazz Ensemble Concert rescheduled for November

calendar icon05 Sep 2014    

Lincoln, Neb.--The University of Nebraska–Lincoln Faculty Jazz Ensemble will perform a recital featuring original works and arrangements they performed on their recent European tour on Wednesday, November 12 at 7:30 p.m. in Westbrook Music Building Rm. 119. The concert is free and open to the public.

Their summer tour included performances at The Montreux International Jazz Festival, Jazz at Vienne Festival, Jazz at Brienz Festival and an invitational performance at the United Nations.

“For me, each one of these international trips that I do, I come back with a greater global perspective,” said Director of Jazz Studies and Associate Professor of Saxophone Paul Haar. “You start to see where you’re at, both in smallness and in greatness. You start to see, ‘Hey, I do this well.’ Or ‘Wow, there’s a lot of great players out there.”

Their performances were all well received. Haar said at their first performance at Jazz at Vienne in France, he felt their set was more listener-friendly, but they weren’t entirely sure at first if the audience liked it.

“For the first two or three tunes, the audience didn’t move, they didn’t say anything, but they clapped,” he said. “I came off stage and said to the venue manager, ‘I don’t think they like us very much.’ He said, ‘No, they’re completely enthralled. They’re not talking. They haven’t heard music like this before.’”

Vienne is an ancient city that goes back to the Roman times.

“We played in the ruins of a Roman amphitheater, and the audience was so close, they were practically sitting in our laps,” said Tom Larson, lecturer of Jazz and Rock History and Jazz Studies. “It was very gratifying for me as a composer, because I could sense that particular audience really liked my tunes.”

Their program will consist of music chosen from their performances at the Montreux Jazz Festival, held annually in July in Switzerland and is one of the most famous Jazz festivals in the world.

“We met a lot of great musicians,” Haar said. “It was cool to see our guys play on that stage.”

Many of the pieces they performed were written or arranged by Larson, including “Big P,” “Mobius Strip,” “Safe Haven” and “Night and Day.” They also performed two arrangements by Associate Professor of Composition and Jazz Studies Eric Richards:   “Wichita Lineman” and “Wolfdenfunk.” Other pieces included in the program will include works by Jimmy Webb, Wynton Marsalis and Wayne Shorter.

In addition, Larson has a new piece, “Ville de l’intrigue,” inspired by the tour, which they will perform. The title is French for “City of Intrigue.”

“It was inspired by our time in Geneva, Switzerland,” Larson said. “Geneva is an international city of diplomacy and finance, and we played a gig at the UN compound there on July 3. It didn’t take much to imagine that anyone you met on the streets or at the UN might be a real-life Jason Bourne.”

Assistant Professor of Percussion and Jazz Studies Dave Hall described the tour as an “amazing opportunity” for him in his first year on the faculty in the Glenn Korff School of Music.

“The crowds were very responsive,” Hall said. “I appreciated the chance to perform that many times with the group as I feel like our musical interactions with each other evolved with each performance. I really enjoy the individuals in the group as people as well, so it was priceless to have this time to enjoy the group camaraderie.”

Haar said the overall experience was good for the ensemble.

“Normally all of our performances are based around the university,” he said. “The performances are important, but they’re also ‘This is a presentation of the faculty jazz group at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.’ This tour was an instance where we were performing as eight musicians who play together, and we had a title. The title was not driving us. It got our name out there, but it showed the group that this is the focus we should have, not the venue or the title.”

One memorable performance was their second performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival, which was played in the middle of a storm.

“We start to play, and it’s looking ominous,” Haar said. “The police make the decision on whether or not to call it, and they hadn’t called it. We start playing, and Darryl White taps me on the shoulder and asks, ‘Where’s the mountain?’ I look, and the mountain across Lake Geneva is gone. All you could see was this white line coming across Lake Geneva, and it’s the meanest, nastiest storm front I’ve ever seen.”

A few tunes into the performance, there was a crack of lightning and a deluge of rain, but they keep playing. The venue manager told them the police haven’t called it off.

“But there was something about that,” Haar said. “The people aren’t leaving. They’re not stopping the show, so we said, ‘Let’s just do it.’ It was probably some of our best stuff.”

Hall was also impressed that the crowd stuck around to hear them play in the storm.

“The group fed off that energy, and it was an electric performance,” Hall said.

The Faculty Jazz Ensemble includes Hall, percussion; Haar, saxophone; Richards, trombone; Larson, piano; Peter Bouffard, guitar; Darryl White, trumpet; and Hans Sturm, bass. Sturm was unable to join them for the European tour. The tour also included two graduate students:  Max Stehr, DMA bass; and Chris Varga, DMA composition, vibraphone.