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MSU Jazz Band helps us appreciate diversity The MSU Jazz Band played at the Detroit International Jazz Festival Labor Day weekend. Festivalgoer Bill Robinson said, “I’ve heard other professionals play the selections they’re playing, and they’re playing just as well if not better.” This year’s festival featured “The Fabric of Jazz: A Tribute to the Genius of American Music.” Lauren Camp, a quilt artist who created a design for the show, explained, “Jazz is the music of freedom and a chronicle of American history. If you study jazz, you learn about wars and about racism and integration. You learn about social customs and culture, love and loss.” Festival directors agree with Camp and this year expanded the festival entertainment to include performances aboard the Detroit Princess, Detroit’s one and only riverboat cruise ship, which featured the new generation of jazz musicians including jazz ensembles from Oberlin College, University of Michigan, as well as our own Michigan State University Jazz Band. Robinson, an eighty-year-old, retired College of Creative Studies Design professor, has followed college jazz bands since the 1930’s and 40’s. “It’s quite amazing that college bands have this professional ability. It’s something that has been carried on into high schools and middle schools.” Robinson attributes this excellence to the wave of professionals involved in music education. In MSU’s jazz band, 11 members are professionals and six are students. Vocalist Thea Neumann performed two numbers with the band, including “Honeysuckle Rose,” a piece by Thomas “Fats” Waller. The song featured Neumann’s “scatting,” a musical technique where the singer substitutes nonsense syllables for words of the song to sound like a musical instrument. Neumann, who graduated from Grant MacEwan College in Alberta, Canada, admitted to being relatively new to jazz music, but emphasized her desire to know more about the genre. “It is the one type of music that you can never stop learning.” Michigan State inaugurated an undergraduate degree program in Jazz Studies in 2001. The program now includes 50 majors with an additional 150 non-majors taking classes or participating in one of the seven MSU jazz ensembles. Rodney Whitaker, director of the program and conductor of the MSU Jazz Band, describes the MSU Jazz Studies Program as an overall enhancing learning experience. “Jazz enriches the life of students while teaching them important aspects of American history. On top of this, the program also teaches leadership skills through music.” One student benefiting from this experience is Lynn Gruenewald, an undergraduate majoring in the Jazz Studies program, who plays alto saxophone with the MSU Jazz Band. Gruenewald not only played on Sunday aboard the Detroit Princess but also with the Gerald Wilson Big Band on Saturday night. Gruenewald feels her educational career has been influenced intellectually and emotionally by jazz music. Jazz also provides a way to engage students in understanding our multi-cultural society. In 2004, Whitaker was awarded the MSU Excellence in Diversity which reflects the importance of not only music, but also cultural education in the Jazz Studies Program. The MSU jazz band will perform at the Music Auditorium on October 9 at 7:30pm with renowned jazz musician Herbie Hancock. Tickets are free for students and those under 18. General admission is $8, $6 for seniors.
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