Black suits, glinting brass and a sold-out crowd. Such was the scene as Bienen students took the floor Monday evening at the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Center for the Musical Arts.
Two of the Bienen Jazz Small Ensembles paid tribute to both jazz composer Horace Silver and 1990s hard bop composer Roy Hargrove.
The concert featured two of Bienen’s Jazz Small Ensembles. The Derrick Gardner Ensemble played iconic tracks from Hargrove, while the Kevin Fort Ensemble performed renditions of Silver.
Curating an evening of blues and gospel, Bienen Prof. Kevin Fort said he decided Silver’s style –– bringing the funk of hard bop out of bebop in the 1950s –– would be perfect for his small ensemble’s performance.
“Horace Silver is just one of the great jazz musicians of the past, and he was a very famous pianist and composer,” Fort said. “He’s an important person in the history of jazz, and we always try to cover someone that’s important for these themed concerts.”
The two Jazz Small Ensembles paid tribute to both Silver and Hargrove at the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Center for the Musical Arts to a sold-out audience.
The Jazz Studies program has four Jazz Small Ensembles; the two combos that did not perform on Monday will have their concert on Oct. 20. Bienen sophomore and pianist Brett Czarniak said students audition in sections of either rhythm and horns, and they are put into ensembles based on the group dynamic.
“It’s not a skill-based thing,” he said. “It’s more like, what type of music are they playing and would you make sense for that type of music?”
Czarniak played with the five-piece Derrick Gardner ensemble and created an arrangement of Hargrove’s “I’m Not So Sure” performance.
Gardner said he has students perform their own arrangements of pieces so that they develop their improvisation skills. It gives students more depth and knowledge to pull from when they’re soloing, he said.
For Czarniak, the most nerve wracking part of the concert was the first 15 minutes.
“It’s the first song that brings the nerves down, and then from there, you focus on looking at the other people (onstage) and interacting with them musically,” Czarniak said. “The second half of the concert, I completely forgot we were playing for people.”
Bienen sophomore Charles Johnson said he has been attending Northwestern jazz concerts since before he transferred in September, and now he is enrolled in Jazz Studies with a specialization in drums. As an audience member, Johnson said he appreciated the range of highlighting a musician who pioneered the hard bop genre alongside a more modern composer.
“A lot of colleges kind of focus on older artists, so I’m glad to see a more contemporary musician get some recognition,” he said. “It was a good selection of songs, too.”
Considering that students only had three weeks of rehearsal to put together a set, Fort said he was impressed with the way the ensembles attacked the challenge.
“I was pleased with how they did because (there) was not a lot of time to rehearse and they kind of pulled together for it,” he said. “We had a good crowd tonight.”
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