Jazz Ensemble: Concert Analysis

On Friday night, November 13, 2015 at 7:30 p.m. I attended the Manhattan School of Music for the Jazz Orchestra that performed by Jazz vocalists and MSM alumni Jane Monheit and many other musicians. That place is unlikely the ordinary place, people have appropriate dress on and have nicely etiquette toward the performers, unlike me, many of audiences seem like that they come to this concert with certain knowledge of Jazz orchestra. And its musical venue was the ideal spot for the concert, so I sat in a decent spot spot that located at midst of the concert hall where I can view all the performers and hear performers’ music clearly. And the conductor informally began the show was quite nicely and politely which made me feel really comfortable

If you did not make it out to see The Jazz Ensemble on Tuesday, Apr. 19th, then you really missed out on a great evening of music. Family, friends, and jazz lovers nearly filled the Anne R. Belk Theater to watch and listen to the performance directed by Dr. Will Campbell, with special guest Derrick Gardner. Gardner is a highly accomplished jazz trumpet player, who has traveled the world playing jazz music.The Ensemble member are; Bryce Harris, Jonathan Carroll, Cody Belton, Garrett Brown and Bryan Patterson on the saxophone, Richard Hall, Casey Blackwelder, Wesley Taylor, Liam McMahon and Cameron Francis on the trumpet, Nathan Ricer, Patrick Foray, Virginia Crooks and Kyle Barnhardt on the trombone, Dallas Holder on the piano, Brian Gilbert on the guitar, and Colin Ray and Eric Chang on the drums. The Ensemble played seven songs, and four of those were played with Gardner. The songs were performed in this order “A Pair of Aces,” “You Must Believe in Spring,” “Count Me In,” “Big Dipper,” “Footprints,” “Just a Touch” and “Lil’ Fawdy.” All of the songs were performed exceptionally well, out of the seven these two were my favorite.

For my second review I attended Jazz at Wolfson again. However, this concert was different from the first performance two weeks ago. Special guest this time was saxophone player Mark Colby, Mike Di Liddo, guitar, Jim Gasior, piano, Gary Thomas, bass and Rodolfo Zuniga played drums. Auditorium was about half full.

On November 17, 2015, I attended a Jazz concert at the UIC Recital Hall featuring Chris Madison and the UIC Jazz Ensemble. The instruments that were played that night include; trumpet, which were played by Giovanni Garcia and Gustavo Espino, the trombone that was played by Thomas Graf, the saxophone, which were played by Robert Bugos, Mitzi Ochoa-Sanchez, Nicholas Buitrago, Mariah Phillips, Drew Sansom, Aaron Newsome- Brownlee, Ashanti Gayden, Alex Rivera, and Alec Cohen, the clarinet was also played by Ashanti Gayden, and the flute was played Laura Erickson. In the rhythm section there were drums that were played by Frank Glassman and Alex Tellez, the bass that was played

On December 3, 2015 the University of Florida’s School of Music hosted a concert at the University Auditorium where the Jazz band performed. The band consisted of four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombone, and rhythm. The Saxophone section performers included Greg Snider (Alto), Dustin Fergerson (Alto), Ben Grier (Tenor), John Peasant (tenor), Tony Laracuente (tenor), and Ryan Colon (Baritone). The Trumpet section performers included Sean Bocinsky, Ben Rochford, Lucas Owen, and Brantley Daniel. The trombone section performers included Stephen Anderson, Jacob Armstrong, Joshua Jenkins, Like Blackman, and Andrew Bajorek. The Rhystem section performers included Zac Chester (piano), Sean Fournier (piano), Erik Abernathy (Guitar), Delorean Fullington (bass), Calvin Bond (bass), Clyde Conner (Drums), Tom Hurst (drums), and Andrew Mankin (drums). The performance consisted of four pieces, which depicted different styles of jazz music. The styles of songs ranging from Afro-Cuban to swing allowing for the crowd to enjoy the wide variety of music.

The jazz music ensemble played a total of 8 pieces from several different composers. One piece that stuck out to me in particular was the song, “Jazz Crimes” composed by Joshua Redman but performed by Steve Houghton. What attracted me to this song was the prestissimo tempo. It was not hard to pick up on to the fast beat, do to the fact that the artists were tapping their feet at a very high rate. I noticed that there were many solos throughout the entire piece, leading me to believe that the song could be classified as a sonata. “Jazz Crimes” has a concert overture because, it does not precede a larger piece of music.

I have it on my calendar to talk to you about increasing the engraving rates. Last time they were updated was 2007, when we did a major renovation to adjust for computer engraving. The previous time increase was 2002 (5 years because Jeff stopped updated rates when he moved). Prior to that from 1986 -1996 the rates were increased about 3% each year. In 2002, Jeff increased the by 4% for legit, and 16-35% for jazz ensemble rates.

On the first of November I visited the Performance Art Center, on Texas State University’s campus. There I saw the Texas State Jazz Ensemble perform with guest, Steve Houghton. The performance began at 7:30pm and lasted for an approximate hour and a half.

On October 13, I attended a concert by the UT Jazz orchestra at the Bates Recital Hall. This performance consisted of seven pieces and all were stylistically different, which allowed the audience to enjoy the various sounds of jazz music. Among the instrument groups, there are saxophones, trumpets, trombones, piano and drums. Professor Jeff Hellmer served as director andJohn Mills appeared as guest conductor. The whole concert made a lasting impression on me.

The date was December 8th, 2017, I had the pleasure of seeing the Saddleback College Jazz Combos perform at the McKinney Theater. The theater is quite large holding about 100~200 seats but seemed to offer a good acoustic balance for the combos that played. Also, one can tell that it was the holiday season by just entering the theater. It was festive as it was decorated with christmas trees with christmas lights and the front was filled with light up flower vases. Furthermore, this concert is a cumulation of different jazz students put into small groups and perform in front of an audience. This concert also showcases their efforts as a group as well as differences in skill level amongst the combos.

On Wednesday night I attended a jazz performance at Bandera restaurant in Brentwood, Los Angeles. Bandera has a jazz performance every weekdnights, and a band named “The Marbles” were playing on that magnificent night. The best songs I really enjoyed during the performance were “Embraceable You,” by Nat King Ko, “She is Funny that Way,” by Billy Holiday, and “Everybody Needs Somebody,” by Jimmy Scott.

On Sunday, May10 2015, a concert was held in The Broad Stage. The concert was played by Santa Monica College Symphony Orchestra, whose conductor is Dr. James Martin. For this concert, I would identify myself as a referential listener at this concert. I say this because I am not an expert in music, therefore it would be hard for me to be a critical listener. I wouldn’t be able to tell what went wrong with a performance even if some incorrect notes were played. I was more of a referential listener because the music was soothing and brought my mind to peaceful thoughts. This essay will tells my experience of the concert in order to persuade my friend to  attend a classical music concert with you in the future.

Have you ever appreciate a really nice sound in your life? This is something funny for me because I love the Jazz music and when I have the opportunity to make my concert review, I thought that the best opinion that I can give you is about the jazz music. I was checking around because I did not have the opportunity to see an event of jazz music here in Reno so I checked in YouTube and I choose one of the most incredible concerts that I have never seen in my life. The international Jazz Day. One of the most important days that many people are joining around the world and they are sharing their experiences and their passion for the music. People do not discriminate that day, people do not see the music as before, people are one and they are sharing together one of the best nights that they will not forget in their life. This day is the International Jazz day and there is no problem because the jazz is spontaneous and share the most beauty thing with you.

This was a fairly simple and straightforward piece. It started out slow with small building crescendos, which became more and more powerful. It had a dark, moody sound and I think that I was played in a minor key. There were many reverberating note to convey this eerie and sad tone. It became progressively more dramatic and intense, constantly repeated with stronger tone color.

The concert opened with In Transit by Mischa Zupko which consisted of five movements. The first movement, called Red Walls of Fog, opened with the piano and saxophone tones clashing extremely. Although this bothered me at first, I felt that this was a stylistic choice on the composer’s part because the clashing tones were shortly resolved with long suspended notes. It presented a very suspenseful tone and drew me in as the listener. Heavy crescendos from both the piano and the saxophone also built up the suspense throughout the first act. Apart from the drawn out high notes performed by the saxophone, I really enjoyed the first act. The second movement, titled Mango Café, was extremely busy sounding. It produces a polyphonic texture instead of the piano purely acting as an accompanist. From the title I understand how the composer was going for the sound of a busy café, but the loud banging of the piano’s melody makes the café sound on fire. I did enjoy the sections of the movement where the saxophone preformed trills while the piano provided support with a smooth legato sound. So Alone Am I, the third act, was much softer and slower