New season for IU Jazz Ensemble

When it comes to jazz, audience is important.

That’s the advice Brent Wallarab, associate professor of music at the Jacobs School of Music’s Jazz Studies Department, said he gives his students.

On Monday evening at the Musical Arts Center, the Brent Wallarab Jazz Ensemble kicked off the fall jazz season with big band music by Thad Jones, Jim McNeely and Clare Fischer, including the original piece “Durkees Ferry Road” composed by graduate student Michael Nearpass.

“(Jazz) tells more about the people than anything else,” Wallarab said. “The people who are performing, the people who composed it and arranged it. Jazz at it’s best tells a pretty amazing story — about creativity, about the history of the United States of America.”

Nearpass is doing an independent study for jazz composition with Wallarab.

“The original assignment was to take a melodic cell or fragment ... a melodic statement, and then base the entire piece of music around one statement, but have it be new and different at each of the different sections of the piece,” Nearpass said.

The goal of the study is for Nearpass to draft an original composition or arrangement at each concert performed by the Wallarab Jazz Ensemble.

The ensemble’s next performance is Oct. 22 at the MAC and will feature famous jazz trombonist Curtis Fuller.

Nearpass, a Terre Haute native, said “Durkees Ferry Road” refers to one of the first roads outside of his hometown. The road leads toward the School of Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he received his undergraduate degree. 

“So just whenever I was going up that road toward Chicago, it was sort of the first road where I knew that I was on my way sort of thing,” he said. “And then coming back, it’s the last road before you get into town. So it’s just a benchmark of either trips.”

After auditioning during the first week of fall semester classes, junior Amanda Garnier scored a spot on the Wallarab Jazz Ensemble.

Garnier plays the lead soprano, alto saxophoneand the clarinet with the ensemble.

Garnier, who is one of 18 members in the ensemble, said she likes playing original compositions that are written by younger composers.

“There’s something about the textures in the music,” she said. “I don’t want to say I connect to it more, but it’s a very different experience for me than playing traditional swing tunes.”

Other than the Wallarab Jazz Ensemble performances scheduled for this jazz season, assistant professor Jeremy Allen will lead a big band jazz ensemble on Monday.

The Latin Jazz Ensemble, directed by Jacobs associate professor Michael Spiro, has also been added to this year’s lineup at the MAC.

Jazz guitarist Mike Stern will visit for clinics at 2:30 p.m. on Oct. 4 inside Ford Hall.
New Singing Hoosier director Steve Zegree will also direct the IU Jazz Ensemble with vocal jazz coach Ly Wilder from 8 to 10:30 p.m. Oct. 26 at Cafe Django.

“Things are going to look a little different this season,” Wallarab said. “But all of it nevertheless is representative of the best that our students have to offer, representative of the great tradition that David Baker himself has established here.”