The jazz band's new album, "Freeplay," includes 11 original compositions written by students. (Photos by L. Brian Stauffer)
By Carolyn Mooney
In the intense and closely knit world of college jazz, campus bands often make CD’s—but rarely do students compose or arrange 100 percent of the music.
But the University of Illinois Concert Jazz Band has just released a double CD of music entirely written or arranged by students. “The whole thing was done in-house,” says Chip McNeill, chairman of jazz studies at the School of Music on the Urbana-Champaign campus. Eleven of the 17 tracks on Freeplay were composed by students in last year’s band, and the rest are student arrangements.
The current University of Illinois Concert Jazz Band
Scott Ninmer, now a senior, was especially prolific: He wrote five of the tunes and arranged two more, including the opening track, “If I Only Had Seven Giant Brains.” (You’ll recognize the scarecrow’s theme from The Wizard of Oz.) A trombonist from Taylorville, Ill., Ninmer began playing jazz back in middle school. His earliest inspiration came from his dad, a trumpet player who has done some composing, and his mom, who first taught him piano. More recent influences are Jim Pugh, Ninmer’s trombone teacher and composition professor at Illinois, and the composer and conductor Bob Brookmeyer.
“I normally just sit down at the piano and start noodling around,” Ninmer says. “I’ll come up with something I like and try to work from there.” He then switches to a computer program that provides the “voices” of different instruments. His favorite composition is “Looking Back,” the last piece on the second CD. “I used what I think were a lot of cool orchestrational colors,” he says.
Matt Hughes, the jazz division's bass teaching assistant
Illinois has about 80 jazz majors, including undergraduates as well as master’s and doctoral students. They typically play in several ensembles at a time, perform regularly, attend campus jazz festivals, help recruit high-school students at special events, and practice daily on top of that. There are 18 different jazz groups on campus, among them the 19-member Concert Jazz Band, a Latin jazz band, and many smaller ensembles. A few years ago the concert band won the top prize at a prestigious festival held at the University of North Texas, itself a long-time powerhouse of college jazz.
McNeill, the concert band’s leader and the former musical director for the jazz musician Arturo Sandoval, studied at North Texas before graduating from the University of Miami (yet another college-jazz powerhouse). He has seen the jazz program evolve at Illinois since he started it nine years ago. “There’s plenty of music here,” he says.
To catch the band performing a song from its new CD at the Iron Post, an Urbana, Ill. bar, check out this YouTube clip:
You can buy the CD ($20) through McNeill, at chipmc[at]illinois.edu.
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9 Responses to Student Originals Are Featured in U. of Illinois Jazz Album
jvknapp - February 11, 2011 at 12:14 pm
I am happy for the U of Illinois Jazz Band. Soon, they might be almost as good as the Northern Illinois University (NIU) Jazz Band, winner of many national and international awards.
Who’d a thunk so much good music could come out of the midwest cornfields!!
JVK
dbell42 - April 28, 2011 at 10:41 pm
Dr. Khan,
I agree with you 100% Those that do not feel the need to use P.h.D. why did you pursue the goal. It cost you financially and time lost from something pursued that you do not feel the need to use. I did not pursue this degree just for the name, but I paid 100,000 for it and you bet your bottoms I am going to use it.
Dr. Bell, Ph.D.
eudaimon - April 29, 2011 at 7:10 pm
I understand why the term “instructor” is used. In caste systems, it is important to be able to identify the untouchables. “Adjunct” is probably meant to emphasize that the person really is not part of the faculty, but a mere and temporary accretion.
“Adjunct professor” was often used to refer to persons with professional titles and responsibilities who also had part time teaching responsibilities at an institution; for example, adjunct professor of medicine.
I think we could do without the term “adjunct” and just stick with “instructor”. It does not really add anything. Tenure stream faculty know that someone labeled as an “instructor” is a lesser being than they and can be mistreated and exploited without a second thought.
polisciguy - May 1, 2011 at 12:16 pm
As a current high school teacher seeking to convert his P/T community college teaching duties into a F/T position, the desire to use the title “professor” is, for me, wholly practical. Students at the K-12 level use the title Mr./Ms. to refer to their teachers (Dr. on the rare occasion that a teacher with a PhD emphasizes the title in the classroom). When said students matriculate to the college level (2-year or 4-year), there should also be a shift in titles as a show of respect for all faculty who have earned some form of graduate degree and are teaching higher level content.
While I have little opinion at this juncture at what the title on my future office door will read before or after tenure, I care a great deal that my students, some of whom had me at the high school level, realize this is college and the level of expectations is higher. While some faculty members may prefer the use of Mr./Ms. in their classroom, if we require the differentiation based upon rank then we tell students that the person presenting content, leading discussion, grading assignments and managing their college course can be treated with just like their high school teachers. I humbly suggest from personal experience that such is a bad precedent to set.
11122222 - September 8, 2011 at 11:01 am
Some years ago, the Dutch minister of education recommended that the universities in the Netherlands switch to English–to make them more international and competitive, recognizing the primacy of English as the global scientific language, and so on. After much debate, this was not done. The argument, entirely ignored by Ben Wildavsky, was over the future of Dutch as a language of “high culture” and as the national language. Today, there are many English language programs in the Netherlands and Dutch universities do quite well–but English has not been forced on them.
katisumas - September 8, 2011 at 12:34 pm
Ben Widalsky writes: “…the other day I read about a surprising – at least to me – impediment to academic internationalization in Sweden. It seems that the government’s Justitieombudsmannen, or Ombudsman for Justice, has reprimanded universities for requiring that job applications and promotion requests be written in English.”
First thought: could you imagine being required to apply for a job at a US university in Chinese?
Why should a Swede be required to apply for a job in her/his own country in a foreign language? (I mean English is a foreign language in Sweden, in case the term confuses some readers). English is the language of science AT PRESENT but as Ben Wildawsky himself noted, most Swedish faculty and researchers speak and read English quite well so they obviously have no problem contributing to scientific research in the English language when needed (also there are plenty of translators specializing in scientific texts and those texts get translated very quickly).
So demanding that job applications in Sweden be written in English smacks of the worst ethnocentric arrogance. I translate the underlying thought in the article: “how dare a conference held in Sweden involves some people talking to each other in the “native” language?”
Could this attitude stem from American academics refusing to learn a single language besides English? (actually isn’t a reading knowledge of at least one or two foreign languages no longer required to get a PhD?)
PS: try learning a bit of Swedish. It’s a beautiful language and Swedes have created a great literature, yes, in their own language (in case you hadn’t noticed, when you read a Swedish author, it’s in translation!).
PS2: In the US we suffer from a serious translation imbalance. English works along with works in other languages get translated all over the world, but we translate very few works into English, so we remain insular and provincial. This explain the astonishment of someone shocked to find that, yes, Swedes do speak and write Swedish, and yes, they are not about to stop.
PS3: this brings to mind Montesquieu’s famous satyrical phrase he put in the mouth of a French character during the eighteenth century when French was thought to be the language of culture/science: ”Comment peut-on etre Persan?” (= ”how can one be Persian”), meaning, how is it possible not to be French. How is it possible to think in a language other than French? How is it possible to have an identity other than French? Of course in this case it’s “how can one be Swedish”. Or again, how can one be able to think in a language other than English? How can one contribute to science in a language other than English?
katisumas - September 8, 2011 at 12:36 pm
How about proto-Sanskrit, or more likely, Chinese, or… words fail me, how many languages are there in the world?
Nathaniel M. Campbell - September 8, 2011 at 2:03 pm
While my comment was meant at least partly in jest, I would point out that proto-Sanskrit is, at present, severely deficient in things like a wide vocabulary and advanced syntax, which would make it an odd candidate for the language of international scholarship. Chinese (and the other “many languages in the world”) are, in fact, tied to particular nationalistic interests — if we decry American hegemony, how can we justify it on the part of the Chinese?
And the suggestion of Latin is based on historical precedent: until the early 20th century, Latin was an international language of scholarship. Why not make it so again?
jacquicav - November 15, 2011 at 10:51 am
Although some may consider it naïve, I truly believe that education is the “great equalizer” in society – so it may very well be what the continent needs (and needs badly) to equip those who will someday emerge as leaders who want to move forward and engage in a much more aggressive approach to conflict resolution.