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Atypical--or a Typical--Ensemble? Rogue Squadron Sweeps Jazz Fest
Story and photo by Liz Fox '00
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Two from Rogue Squadron: Calvin Barnes on tenor sax, J.
Q. Whitcomb on trumpet.
One by one, members of the nascent jazz ensemble, Rogue Squadron, enter Studio A in Hales Gym. Referring to the ensemble by name seems premature, since juniors Jason Brown, J.Q. Whitcomb, Adam Faulk, Calvin Barnes, and sophomore Steve Wood have played together only a handful of times. Yet their presence, spontaneity, and sublime cohesion--even without instruments--displaces any doubt regarding their legitimacy as a jazz ensemble.
One person's account flows into the next as they relive and describe winning the Elmhurst College Jazz Festival, held just west of Chicago, on February 25th. They speak simultaneously, as if making music, until one member has a solo, adding to the group's vitality and clarity in his own voice.
Brown, a drummer from New Rochelle, New York, had learned about the competition from Professor of Jazz Studies and Double Bass Peter Dominguez a mere three weeks before the event. Flirting with time, he contacted the other students only days before they were to perform. "It was against all odds," Brown says, admitting they had never played together before. "But we came together as a group."
By the time the ensemble performed
on the last day of the festival, they had played together only twice before:
first in rehearsal, and then at Oberlin's Jazz Forum, where they received
technical critique from the Oberlin jazz faculty.
Piece by piece, the five musicians became a unit. After correcting a few
wrong turns off of Highway 90 and overcoming various other logistical
challenges of a band on the road, they decided to call themselves Rogue
Squadron.
Despite its patchwork beginnings, Rogue Squadron prevailed over 34 college jazz ensembles at the festival, performing Oberlin faculty member Don Walden's Sowetto-Detroit, Bud Powell's Oblivion, John Coltrane's Just for the Love and Tad Demeron's On a Misty Night.
The ensemble's combination of talent, rapport and instinct compelled the three judges--Matt Harris, Jeremy Davenport, and Pat LaBarbara--to call them winners, and inspired one to personally congratulate the band. "The single thing that stood out was how we played together," says Barnes, a tenor saxophonist from Indianapolis. "We were individual fighters who came together as a collective."
"Our goal for the competition was to play well, and we did," says Whitcomb, a trumpet player from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Winning the competition garnered Rogue Squadron an invitation to open for Clark Terry, who performed the festival's final act. "For our second performance," says Whitcomb, "we came up with two new goals: to be concise and spiritual. We were."
The musicians attribute their success to the Oberlin jazz faculty's value on playing with each other. "The Oberlin faculty tries hard to make the jazz department one big family," says pianist Faulk, who is from Oberlin. "And that's what we were out there--five guys loving the same thing. Loving jazz."
"We expect our students to bring their individual talents to the table and contribute to an outcome larger than the sum of its parts," Dominguez says matter-of-factly.
"The musicians must be democratic. What you hear is respect for other cultures and equality among musicians. Others talk about diversity and culture; jazz musicians live it. They must move beyond the "cult" part of culture and truly respect each other if they want to eliminate hierarchy and make good music."
Jazz ensembles such as Rogue Squadron result from the department's fire of talent, culture, vision, and history. Besides looking for candidates with strong technical backgrounds, the department seeks passionate musicians. "The students we admit have to have a touch, a sound--something already there," says Dominguez. "We ask our students what their dreams are. We put art first."
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