Everything changes at night.
What once was a bustling campus watering hole sinks into a steady, tranquil rhythm, the crowds level off at a comfortable number, and conversations linger as whispers or fade away entirely. It’s still the same old Kerckhoff Coffeehouse, but something is different, calmer, freer. That’s the goal of the Cultural Affairs Commission’s weekly Monday night Jazz Series: to get students to slow down, relax and learn to appreciate an art form they may not have considered in the past.
“I feel like jazz music is looked at by the younger generation as related to elevators and nice restaurants,” said Colin Gordon, third-year music student, percussionist and co-director of the Jazz Series. “But back in the day, jazz musicians were like rock stars, and I’m really trying to bring back the whole jazz thing. Hopefully people will respect that.”
So to get young people interested in a relatively antique genre (compared, at least, to the musical whims of a new vocoder-enhanced Kanye and the next big little art-rock thing from Brooklyn), Gordon and co-director Kat Horstmann have big plans in mind. They’ll start with the basics: exploring the root of jazz music by emphasizing improvisation.
“Nowadays, jazz is just a broad category for music that’s improv,” Gordon said. “All that means when you’re a jazz band is that you’re improvising. … There are a lot of different kinds of music that are jazz.”
With that in mind, the series will explore all kinds of subgenres from funk to big band to abstract free jazz. Since groups of performers materialize and dissolve around individual performances, the series changes drastically night to night because of the personality quirks of each evening’s musicians.
“There were kids who were actually in their own bands, and there were some jam nights where it’s a free”‘for”‘all,” said Horstmann, a fourth-year international development studies student. “That’s one of the cool things I like about jazz. … One person sets the tone, and everything vibes from there. Often, a couple of kids hook up just an hour before the show and decide to play.”
Jazz drummer and regular series performer Max Griffith agreed. “Usually when I play the jazz night, the group was created just for that night … and we just rehearse maybe one night,” Griffith said, a fourth-year global studies student.
While many Mondays will be relatively free-spirited and laid-back, some will have set programs. Last year, the series put on a Valentine’s Day date night complete with romantic jazz and a silent movie and dinner. Gordon and Horstmann plan to recreate the magic this year.
They will also host a Hurricane Katrina awareness night like last year’s, which included Dixieland jazz and a speaker from the nonprofit organization Habitat for Humanity in an effort to involve students in the discourse on and the reconstruction of New Orleans. But despite that ambitious goal, the program’s primary focus remains targeted: to get students interested in jazz and to give jazz musicians a place to showcase their talents.
“I’m thinking of having a school jam session,” said Gordon. “A lot of people who have a passion for music just don’t have a place to play. I think that will bring a lot of students who have never gone before into the show.”
Of course, the series also has its regulars.
Griffith and pianist Urie Norris, a fourth-year ethnomusicology student, are among the many campus performers who frequent the stage. Although their acts constantly take on new and inventive incarnations, the bottom line is always to connect with people through the music.
“It’s how I speak to people ““ with jazz music. It’s a communication thing,” Norris said. “It’s like saying, “˜Hey, I’m going down to the mall, man,’ and somebody says back, “˜Hey, pick me up a shirt there!’ It’s a communication between yourself, the other artists and the audience. It’s deep.”