Jazz Composers Hone Classical Chops at 'Boot Camp'

The youngest was a 17-year-old musical prodigy from Santa Monica, Calif. The oldest was 66-year-old renowned jazz bassist Rufus Reid.

In July, they were among the 29 jazz composers who came to Columbia, along with a distinguished roster of musicians, for the first Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute.

Musicians and composers Jane Ira Bloom and Derek Bermel (left and center) were two of the notable instructors teaching composition seminars at the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute at Columbia July 20-24.

The institute, which organizer George Lewis dubbed a sort of “boot camp” for composers, focused on the challenge of writing jazz for symphony orchestras.

Lewis, director of Columbia’s Center for Jazz Studies and the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music, organized the institute in conjunction with the American Composers Orchestra (ACO), the only orchestra in the world dedicated solely to music by American composers. Lewis said he was hoping to send the students home “overloaded with new ideas” and ready to create interesting, new jazz hybrids.

Over five days, participants had the opportunity to study compositional techniques, orchestration, instrumentation and notation with prominent contemporary composers such as Jane Ira Bloom, Derek Bermel, Alvin Singleton, Anthony Davis, Fabien Lévy and Tania Léon. The institute also featured seminars about working with conductors, copyists and publishers, and other topics relevant to aspiring composers.

Wet Ink, a New York-based music collective led by conductor and Columbia alumnus Carl Bettendorf (GSAS’08), held workshops and demonstrations designed to familiarize participants with the various sections of the orchestra and issues of scoring for a large orchestral ensemble.

“They were clearly among the best possible people one would want for such a project,” said Lewis of his fellow instructors. “Similarly, Wet Ink is one of New York’s most adventurous new music ensembles, a fact due in no small measure to its character as an organization led by composer-performers strongly associated with Columbia’s new music community.”

The students ranged widely in background and experience. The youngest, Phillip Golub, will be a high school senior this fall and was the recipient of the 2009 ASCAP Young Jazz Composers Award. Golub said he was drawn to the institute’s emphasis on combining genres and disciplines. “This is what I’ve been trying to do since I got into composition,” he said, “to figure out how to blend the genres to the point where you can’t tell if it’s jazz or classical, and it’s just something new.”

The elder statesman of the group was Reid, a jazz educator and composer who has performed with Dexter Gordon, Thad Jones and other jazz legends. Reid, who won a Guggenheim Fellowship for music composition in 2008, said learning about the orchestra’s “broad palette” helped him in his current ambition to write a piece that is both unfamiliar and accessible to his audience. He summarized some of the lessons of the institute: “Be patient. Write what you imagine. Be true to yourself in your music.”

In one composition seminar, Singleton, whose works have been performed by dozens of leading orchestras and musical ensembles, played a recording of one of his pieces by a quartet that included Branford and Wynton Marsalis. After playing the piece, which drew heavily on the players’ ability to improvise, Singleton highlighted its different elements and urged students to “know who you are writing for.”

The weeklong program culminated with two well-received concerts at Miller Theatre. On July 23, Wet Ink performed pieces by Leroy Jenkins, Richard Barrett, Bernhard Lang, Katharina Rosenberger and Eric Wubbels. The following evening, a program held by the ACO featured works by John Zorn, Anthony Davis, Earle Brown, Roscoe Mitchell and Errollyn Wallen.

Phase II of the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute, the Readings, will take place next June, when new compositions by six selected participants will be performed by the ACO in a concert at Miller Theatre. “The idea is to kind of seed the clouds for the field of jazz,” said Lewis, “and also perhaps to make some changes in the way that orchestras look at improvisation.”

—by Nick Obourn

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Louis Brus, the Thomas A. Edison Professor of Chemistry, will receive the 2011 Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry. The award, sponsored by E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Co., recognizes outstanding theoretical or experimental research in the field of physical chemistry.

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