It’s easy to think of jazz repertoire being set in stone like standard classical repertoire, canonized by the greats such as Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. The Columbia University Jazz Composers Collective concert this Friday, Feb. 27 at 8 p.m. in Miller Theatre aims to disprove this notion.
The concert, debuting the collective as an established group on campus, will feature the original compositions of many award-winning student composers from the Columbia music department’s Composition Program. The performers range from Columbia undergraduates and graduate students to faculty and renowned alumni.
The purpose of the concert is to both showcase talented Columbia-affiliated jazz musicians and to present new compositions that, according to professor Chris Washburne, who will be conducting the ensembles on Friday, “are pushing the envelope in various ways.” The new compositions aim to combine contemporary classical influence with jazz technique. They experiment with different instrumental combinations, including more traditional ensembles, like the big band.
The wide range of musicians contributing to the concert is a testament to the success that Columbians can achieve in the music world after graduation. A notable example is Patrick Zimmerli, CC ’90, who is featured in one of the concert’s pieces. He currently writes music for the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and is an active saxophonist in the New York area as well as a member of the Columbia music department faculty.
The collective is a brainchild of professor Washburne, who created the Louis Armstrong Jazz Performance Program in 2002. Since its humble beginnings as a small group of eight musicians and one ensemble, it has expanded to include 125 students, 14 ensembles and 12 faculty members. Washburne said that he formalized the once informal jazz community at Columbia with the establishment of these organizations.
For Washburne, this debut concert is particularly important because it focuses on the students. He explained, “The Center for Jazz Studies and the Jazz Performance Program both bring in other musicians from the outside, but we have to promote our own. I’ve had this [concert] in mind for many years and now we have a large enough community for it.”
In Washburne’s opinion, the composers collective is the last building block in establishing the jazz program at Columbia because it promotes the performance aspect of jazz at Columbia while enriching what is already a world-renown center of jazz scholarship. He hopes that the CU Jazz Composers Collective’s concert will become an annual event that brings together musicians, composers, students, faculty, and alumni to create a formalized jazz community for years to come.
CU Jazz Composers Collective will perform on Friday Feb. 27 at 8 p.m. in Miller Theatre. The concert is free and open to the public.
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