Every summer, a group of talented musicians, ranging in age from 14 to adult, gather together to jam … with jazz, that is.
The five-day Jazz Camp at UC San Diego offers intermediate to advance level musicians a diverse, one-of-a-kind journey into the world of jazz with group courses and workshops, plus private lessons, jam sessions, and concerts. The camp’s extraordinary faculty of leading jazz improvisers and educators help to sharpen students’ performance skills and enrich their experience of jazz as a broad spectrum of options for musical expression.
But the students aren’t the only ones to benefit. UCSD-TV cameras were at this year’s Jazz Camp Finale Concert to capture highlights of the wonderful student ensembles performing standards and new compositions. Watch it on your TV tonight, August 10, at 8pm or get a jump on your jazz fix and enjoy it online now. No jazz hands, please.
When Thelonious Sphere Monk died in 1982, the world lost one of the giants of American music. Monk is the second most recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington, which is remarkable as Ellington composed over 1,000 songs while Monk only left the world about 70. He is one of five jazz musicians to be featured on the cover of Time magazine, the others being Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Wynton Marsalis and Dave Brubeck.
In a competition named in Monk’s honor, Joshua White, who honed his jazz chops as a teenager at UC San Diego Jazz Camp, was one of three finalists. White eventually seized second place at the most prestigious annual competition in jazz, the Thelonious Monk Institute’s International Jazz Piano Competition.
“This is the jazz world’s equivalent of the Van Cliburn Competition in classical music, so it is a major accomplishment to be selected from an international field of musicians. Just being asked to be there is a huge accomplishment,” said Daniel Atkinson, the founder of the UC San Diego Jazz Camp, where White started learning jazz in 2003.
Jazz Camp allows students from age 14 to 70+ to study, jam and create with some of the world’s finest musicians. Now a member of their ranks is being recognized as one of the world’s great jazz pianists.
George Varga, music critic for the San Diego Union-Tribune, said “His bravura three-song, 17- minute performance, combined sophistication and youthful daring, finesse and flair, introspection and soul. Like few of the 11 other semifinalists— who hailed from as far afield as Israel, Tanzania and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia— White, 26, took repeated chances in his playing, without sacrificing the innate musicality that has made him a favorite of discerning San Diego jazz listeners.”
White was selected as one of the three finalists by an all-star panel of judges that included such jazz piano icons as Herbie Hancock, Ellis Marsalis and longtime James Moody Quartet pianist Renee Rosnes.
“Virtuosity is alive and well in jazz,” said Monk Institute leader T.S. Monk, the son of the late jazz piano giant, after White gave the 12th and final performance at the competition held in the Kennedy Center.
Less than 12 hours after White won the $10,000 prize for second place, he and the two other finalists shared a 10 a.m. car ride to the White House. The musicians were led to a room adjacent to the Oval Office for photos with the nation’s number one jazz fan, President Barack Obama, who has cited the late sax icon John Coltrane as one of his favorites.
“President Obama said some pretty cool stuff about Monk and his music,” said the soft spoken White, who also marveled at the president’s height. “He has a few inches on me, and I am 6- foot-1.”
White said he has been in a great deal of hard work since he enrolled eight years ago as a flute student at Jazz Camp. Offered through UC San Diego Extension, the camp is one of the best ways for proficient musicians to immerse themselves and move toward fluency. Whether the dialect is bebop, cool, fusion, third-stream, Latin, postbop, or freeform, jazz is spoken here.
Jazz Camp is a five-day musical immersion— where musician instructors and students communicate with notes and also with the words that impart jazz history and theory, and all aspects of life as a musician. Students and faculty have agreed that the difference in playing between Monday and Friday – the rate of growth people experience at the camp – is phenomenal. A typical day begins at 9 a.m. and ends at 9 p.m., when participants have to be encouraged to take a break and get some rest.
“Since I am involved in the auditions each year, I see the degree of progress that a student can make in only five days of concentrated study,” says Atkinson, who is also the jazz programming director for the La Jolla Athenaeum Music & Arts Library. “The students draw a huge amount of inspiration from the faculty, who are real masters of the art form, as well as from one another. They leave the camp with many more concepts than they have been able to assimilate during that one week. “
Atkinson points out that what’s unique about the program is that they teach about a whole spectrum of different styles of jazz. “The focus here is not on how to play an instrument—as the students come with aptitude. The focus is on helping them learn to improvise on their instruments. It’s not just Ellington, Charlie Parker, and Monk, but a whole set of different approaches to improvising.”
Six years ago, a young scholarship student by the name of Joshua White came to the UC San Diego Jazz Camp and showed such enormous talent as a jazz musician that we were simply blown away. We have been keeping in touch with him since his first year at Jazz Camp, and are happy to report that he placed second in the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. Joshua was recently interviewed by the San Diego Union-Tribune, and he said something that struck a bell with me.
Q: What was the bigger thrill, meeting President Obama or getting praised face to face by Herbie [Hancock]?
A: Even though I love President Obama and I loved speaking to Herbie and getting that kind of encouragement and validation, the highlight for me was taking the stage and having everyone listen while I painted musical pictures over the silence…Being able to take this artistic journey was the biggest thrill.
It’s learning the love of performing that makes music such a central part of someone’s life. Joshua’s comment made me think back to how I got started on a lifelong music-making career myself. Back longer ago than I care to reveal, when I was 5-years-old, my father took me to a concert given by the great jazz drummer, Gene Krupa, who was a longtime friend of his. At the time, Krupa was staging “drum duels” with jazz drumming legend, Buddy Rich. I can remember sitting in a darkly-lit nightclub, surrounded by a miasma of cigarette smoke and the pervasive smell of scotch, watching those two amazing musicians, mesmerized by just how much fun they were having playing. To me, no one conveyed the sheer love, the unending thrill, of being a drummer more than Krupa.
After the performance, my dad took me up to meet his longtime friend, and Krupa, seeing how intensely I was staring at his drum kit handed me his sticks and said, “Here, kid. Go wild.” I sat down at his drum kit and made what must have been a truly horrible cacophony. Krupa picked up another pair of sticks and started playing one of the side drums, setting a rhythm for me to follow. There I was having a drum duel with Gene Krupa! I think the smile on my face must have been a hundred miles wide. After we finished, Krupa looked at my father and said, “He’s a natural,” patted me on the head, then turned to his left and said, smiling, “You’d better watch out, Buddy!”
Simple gestures of encouragement can change our lives when it comes to expressing ourselves. Because of Gene Krupa’s kind words, I started taking drum lessons as soon as I could after that; and then eagerly began learning other instruments as well. But what Krupa passed on to me was one of the greatest gifts a musician can bestow: he showed me the sheer joy of performing, of painting over the silences with sound, of connecting to oneself and others through music. And that’s the primary thing I look for in all of our Performing Arts instructors. Whether it’s Music, Acting or Dance, our Performing Arts instructors are themselves dedicated performers who love what they do, and the core of their teaching is passing on that feeling to others. They have an intense love of their art that is infectious and life-affirming.
Please join us in one of our upcoming acting, dance, singing, piano or guitar courses here at UC San Diego Extension, and take some time to get in tune with your inner performer.
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Stan Walens is Program Representative for Humanities and Performing Arts at UC San Diego Extension. He holds a Ph.D. in Psychological Anthropology, and specialized in the relationship between art, religion, and family dynamics in both Native American and contemporary American cultures. He plays nearly two dozen instruments, lectures and writes program notes for many San Diego music organizations, and has avid interests in history, politics and culture, biology, performance studies, theatre, film and dance. He is a compulsive birder.
UC San Diego Jazz Camp alumni Chase Morrin, Fernando Gomez and Tyler Eaton, three members of the Chase Morrin Group, have taken first place in the Open Combo Division at the Monterey Jazz Festival’s Next Generation Festival. In addition to taking the top combo spot, Chase also took the top prize for composition, and his piece, “Mumphis” will be performed at the 54th Annual Monterey Jazz Festival by the Next Generation Jazz Orchestra, on the Jimmy Lyons Stage on Sunday, September 18. The Chase Morrin Group will also be featured at the festival, where Chase will also receive the 4th Annual Gerald Wilson Award. The Monterey Jazz Festival invites top student musicians from around the world to participate in the Next Generation Festival to compete for a few coveted performance spots in September’s internationally known event.
Dan Atkinson, director of the UCSD Jazz Camp and the La Jolla Athenaeum Music & Arts Library’s jazz program coordinator, is delighted to hear about the group’s accomplishment. “It is really an extraordinary achievement that Chase, Tyler and Fernando have won first place in this national competition. Each is a stellar young musician. Chase’s multiple talents as a pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader are truly exceptional. This award is just one more step towards establishing him as a national-level player in jazz.”
UC San Diego Jazz Camp is five-day summer program for intermediate to advanced level musicians ages 14 to adult. An extraordinary faculty of leading jazz improvisers and educators teach each year, including leading bebop saxophonist Charles McPherson, Angels in America composer Anthony Davis and Grammy-nominated bassist Mark Dresser (both faculty of the UCSD Department of Music).
