Whatever happened to all of that jazz?

GRAPHIC BY SARA EDWARD-CORBETT

Yale's jazz scene has fallen on tough times. Some blame a lack of administrative support, some blame Yale musicians' own diverse interests and lack of enterprise, and some blame the Admissions Office's failure to bring in sorely needed bassists and drummers.

Whatever the reason, jazz has not found a way in the past few years to fit into what Professor Thomas Duffy, Assistant Dean of the School of Music and former Yale Jazz Ensemble director, calls "the economy of music at Yale." Duffy remembers a time, not too long ago, when the Yale Jazz Ensemble performed at the Village Vanguard in New York City and Ronnie Scott's in London "when I could name five or 10 trios, quartets, and quintets that existed in the College," Duffy said. But between the fall of 1995 and 1997, there was no Yale Jazz Ensemble. Why? Because nobody would play drums.

In a school with a thriving classical music scene, an a cappella fetish, and many rock groups, it's surprising that jazz plays such a marginal role. "The scene here is pretty lame," pianist Aaron Greenblatt, CC '99, of Sextones fame, said. Joshua Penman, MC '00, summed up many jazz musicians' frustration. "Yale jazz: that's an oxymoron."

This is not to say that jazz at Yale is dead. There are many talented jazz musicians with impressive credentials on campus, and the Yale Jazz Ensemble, in its second year back from hiatus, has already received rave reviews.

Furthermore, thanks to a pair of freshmen in Morse, Yale can once again boast a steady jazz combo. Saxophonist Matthew Clayton and pianist Konrad Kaczmarek performed with drummer Zach Dodes, DC '99, and bassist Benjamin Landsverk, TC '99, to a packed house in the home of Morse Master Stanton Wheeler, a proud friend of jazz who himself plays cornet, trumpet, and flugelhorn, and often jams with his students.

Before Yale, Clayton played in the Grammy All-American Jazz Band, a group of outstanding high school jazz players selected from regional combos across the nation which plays at several prominent New York jazz clubs as well as at the Grammy Awards reception. Kaczmarek received an award from contemporary jazz giant Wynton Marsalis as an outstanding soloist at the Duke Ellington Festival.

Despite of the promise of this yet-to-be-named quartet, most of Yale's jazz musicians remain disappointed and frustrated. The problem starts with the Admissions Office. For whatever reason, there has been a shortage of jazz bassists and drummers in the last several incoming classes. And those who do arrive on campus often have other interests which monopolize their time. Jazz Ensemble bassist Alyssa Reiffel, BR '02, plays in the Yale Symphony Orchestra, while Landsverk is a Whiffenpoof. According to Greenblatt, "The Admissions Office doesn't seem to be paying any attention" to bringing jazz musicians to Yale."

Grammy All-American guitarist Charlie Looker, Clayton's former bandmate and now a freshman at Wesleyan, remembers his visit to Yale. "A faculty member told me, `If you're looking to play, don't come to Yale.'" Looker's decision to attend Wesleyan, where he can study under acclaimed jazz educator Anthony Braxton, shows the self-perpetuating nature of Yale's lack of a jazz scene. Most jazz musicians who attend Yale come in spite of the scene, not because of it. Alto sax player Noah Enelow, CC '00, explains, "I did not come to Yale to learn jazz. I came to get a liberal arts education." Like most Yalies, jazz musicians here manage to keep themselves busy with other academic and extracurricular interests.

Yale jazz musicians are also frustrated with the music department's offerings. "Yale doesn't offer a major that pertains directly to jazz," history major and jazz guitarist Richard Hinman, TC '01, said. While they acknowledge that the classical composition department is excellent and that there are several courses offered on the study of jazz, many feel disenfranchised by the music department as a whole. "They are classical music snobs" Enelow said. Greenblatt complained that "even the jazz theory classes are classically biased. You barely get up to sevenths [an elementary component of jazz harmony] in Music 211," one of several classical prerequisites to the high-level music course on jazz theory.

Some also complain that the jazz history courses tend to be guts. According to one student who took Frank Tirro's spring term 1998 jazz history course, "I started my term paper at 4 a.m. the day it was due. I said that `John Coltrane was perhaps the most influential musician of the '60s and '70s.' To which my TA's comment was `He died in '67!' The comments at the end of the paper noted `surprising factual errors.' Nonetheless, I got a B." Imagine if a history major, writing a term paper on a figure of analogous importance to the field, say Napoleon, had labeled him an important figure in the 20th century, and you can understand jazz musicians' frustration.

The jazz musicians' biggest bone of contention is what they see as Yale's failure to provide them with lessons for credit like their classical counterparts. Although many Yale jazz musicians are indignant about this policy, it arises more from logistical issues than from any doubts in the music department about the legitimacy of jazz. "We're bound by the School of Music's graduate curriculum decision," Duffy, who heads the Lessons for Credit Program, explained. "We can offer lessons on instruments they offer lessons in, but [the undergraduate Music Department] is an academic, non-performance-based department. I certainly bemoan the fact that they don't have that, but that's not their mission."

Kaczmarek, who grew up in the New Haven area, points to local jazz musicians and instructors as an underutilized resource. "[Yale] should have taken advantage of the local musicians who teach in the area," he said, "There are tons of local musicians who I think could be teaching. There's the Educational Center for the Arts and the Neighborhood Music School. I think there should be much more collaboration between them and Yale."

In terms of institutional support, there is the Jazz Ensemble, headed by former band president David Brandenburg, CC '92. Although students are happy that such a group is together again after two years of nonexistence, many long for smaller, more progressive combos who pay more attention to improvisation than to reading. "I believe I read somewhere that The Yale Jazz Ensemble plays everything from slow swing to fast swing," Penman quipped.

Yale also boasts the Duke Ellington Fellowship, which allows leading jazz artists to perform at Yale. Directed by accomplished French horn player Willie Ruff, former member of the 1950s Miles Davis/Gil Evans Orchestra and currently a professor at the Yale School of Music, since 1972 the Ellington Fellowship has brought such greats as Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Golson, Max Roach, Gerry Mulligan, and Ellington himself to campus. Last year, guitarist Kenny Burrell performed, and this fall there was a Jazz Piano Summit featuring pianists Dwike Mitchell, Barry Harris, and Dick Hyman playing as a trio.

In spite of their disappointment in Yale's jazz offerings, many student musicians admit that much of the blame lies on their own shoulders. "It has to stem from students' passion to play the music. A lot of arts at Yale aren't interested in the Administration," Clayton said.

There seems to be some interest among Yale students in live jazz performance, as the audience at Master Wheeler's house and the popularity of jazz-influenced, heavily improvisational party bands like the Sextones suggest. And recorded jazz remains a favorite on campus. "Even jocks listen to jazz these days." J. Alex Michas, DC '01, said, "On the crew trip to Tampa last spring, some of the rowers had Miles Davis and John Coltrane CDs in their Discmen," Perhaps the perceived lack of an audience for Yale jazz is merely the student body's inadequate exposure to these musicians in a jazz setting.

For many undergraduate jazz musicians, the state of the jazz scene at Yale seems like a fact of life at a university where everyone always has something else to do. In addition to the party bands and other musical projects that keep Yale's versatile jazz musicians busy, jazz bands lose many of their gigs to singing groups. "For a lot of classy on-campus gigs where they would normally hire jazz musicians there's a tendency to hire a cappella groups instead," Hinman said.

Maybe Yale's jazz musicians will be encouraged by the early success of those Morse freshmen to organize themselves and bring Yale's jazz scene out of dormancy. Maybe then someone will finally give the singing groups a run for their money.

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