The Glenn Korff School of Music begins the 2019-2020 jazz season with a new pairing of ensembles.
The Jazz Orchestra and Jazz Singers (formerly known as the Vocal Jazz Ensemble), both under the direction of Lecturer David von Kampen, will perform Oct. 9 at 7:30 p.m. in Kimball Recital Hall. Tickets are $5 general and $3 students/seniors and are available at the door.
“This is my fifth year directing Jazz Singers,” von Kampen said. “One of the things I always preach to jazz choirs when I work with them is that they are more like a big band than a traditional choir, only using their voices as the instruments. Vocal jazz is still coming out of the jazz tradition, in terms of literature and style, so it feels like a very natural pairing to me to have these two groups perform together.”
He has some experience directing instrumental jazz ensembles.
“I wrote charts for the Jazz Ensemble at the University of Kansas when I was doing my doctorate there, and Dan Gailey would let me come and run the rehearsals on my tunes,” he said. “And I directed the Jazz Ensemble at Doane University for two years. But this is the first time I’ve led my own band with grad students and lots of instrumental majors. It’s exciting to be able to do really serious literature at a high level.”
The Jazz Orchestra and Jazz Singers will each perform a variety of arrangements and original compositions from some of the preeminent jazz writers of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Bob Brookmeyer, Vince Mendoza, Tom Kubis and Dick Reynolds. The concert will also include music arranged by Michele Weir and former UNL composition professor Eric Richards, in addition to several arrangements and compositions by von Kampen.
“The audience should expect new music from living composers and arrangers,” von Kampen said. “We’ve got some of the most important contemporary jazz writers represented. It will be a very accessible concert.”
For this first concert together, the Jazz Orchestra and Jazz Singers will perform separately, but von Kampen envisions them playing together at times as the season progresses.
“In previous years, the two big bands performed on a single concert, which was great because you got to hear a whole night of big band music,” he said. “But I think this new pairing is really nice because it will create a little more variety throughout the evening. And people that usually come to hear Jazz Singers will hear some really great stuff with the band and hopefully vice-versa.”
There are many reasons von Kampen likes jazz.
“The harmonic vocabulary is so rich, and it can bring in elements of many different styles of music,” he said. “Jazz combines with other things very easily. It’s very easy to get a jazz-classical hybrid, it’s very easy to mix jazz with funk or hip-hop. And popular songs are the basis of the jazz repertoire. All the standard tunes go back to what was essentially mainstream pop music in the first part of the 20th century. I like the versatility of it, and the balance of complexity and accessibility. Jazz is America’s art music, so we need to listen to it and play it and compose it.”
His goal for students in both ensembles is to develop the ability to perform with other musicians at a high level.
“If you can do jazz, you can do anything, because it develops your overall musicianship in a way that prepares you for other musical experiences,” von Kampen said. “You have to have the technical chops and be comfortable in different styles. That, and just the inherent value of people making great music together.”