Jazz Education Concert

On April 15, I attended the Somers Point Jazz Society Education Concert hosted in the Stockton Performing Arts Center. Many students from different elementary schools who were young musicians attended, as well as other Stockton students and some community members. Tickets were free and seating was very informal, which made for convenience in entering the performance. The jazz group consisted of a piano player, bass, drums, guitar, trumpet, and saxophone, some of the musicians being adjunct members of Stockton’s faculty. There were plenty of different sounds from the instruments that made for a well-balanced concert.
Studying for a music minor at Stockton and previously being a member of my high school’s jazz band, I appreciated the way the group went about their performance. The leader of the group, the saxophonist, talked in between pieces and explained the style of the jazz music they were about to perform, as well as giving background information about the composers of each. He also arranged their performance in such a way that the music was chronological in style as the jazz era progressed from the early 1900s on. My favorite piece that they played, St. Thomas, composed by Sonny Rollins, was a piece that my jazz band had once performed, therefore it is also close to my heart.
Although I am doing classical music studies here at Stockton, jazz performance will always be something I enjoy very much. I am always surprised by musicians’ ability to improvise in jazz music, as this concert was very much based by playing melodies in synch, followed by improvised solos from each of the musicians. Improvisation is especially hard because one must keep to the key signature of the piece, as well as follow the main melody, with a personal twist. Personally, I have much difficulty with this as a musician, and luckily classical music does not include this difficult task too often. I thoroughly enjoyed experiencing this in concert and learned about a lot of jazz composers, some of which I had not yet heard of.