Oberlin Conservatory Graduate Matthew Shulman Wins Alberto Vilar Global Fellowship in the Performing Arts By Marci Janas ’91
	RELATED STORIES: About the Alberto Vilar Global Fellowships in the Performing Arts International Selection Committee for the Vilar Global Fellows Competition In His Own Voice [and his own words]: Matt Shulman and Multi-Phonics		Jazz trumpeter Matthew Shulman ’96 lives in New York City, but he’s originally from Vermont, a state not equated with jazz musicians. That could change now that Shulman is among only six performing artists selected as inaugural recipients of the prestigious Alberto Vilar Global Fellowships in the Performing Arts. Some 360 applicants from 191 colleges and universities in Europe and North America applied for the newly minted Vilar Fellowships in various artistic categories; Shulman’s award is in the field of jazz studies. After five years of "sweating it out in New York City," Shulman says he is both excited and apprehensive about what this fellowship means for him. "While I think I’ll always need the loose atmosphere of a jazz club, I’m ready to start taking my music out of the bars and into the concert hall, to a consistently real listening audience." For Shulman, the Vilar Fellowship has come with fringe benefits that complement the two years of free graduate study at NYU. "John Corigliano has expressed an interest in my music, and I landed a featured guest soloist spot with the New York Pops Orchestra in Carnegie Hall under the direction of Skitch Henderson, just as a result of the Vilar audition process. It’s hard to even get these people to hear you." What these people are hearing, and what New York audiences will hear April 29 when Shulman debuts at Carnegie Hall, is a musician who has been hailed by The New York Times as "a new voice from jazz's emerging generation, playing at an extraordinarily high level ... an individual voice with technical ability, confidence, imagination, and distinction." This "new voice" won first prize in the 1996 National Trumpet Competition’s Note Entertainment Group College Jazz Division, performing Three Little Words and his own arrangement of Angel Eyes. Since then Shulman has won top prizes in numerous competitions, including the International Trumpet Guild Jazz Competition, the Thelonius Monk International Jazz Trumpet Competition, and the Yamaha Performing Artist Award. Shulman’s musical activities are diverse: he is a composer, arranger, sideman, educator, recording artist, and patent-holding inventor of the eponymous Shulman System for Brass, a resonating sort of device that also serves as a stabilizing unit between trumpet and trumpet player. How does he keep everything straight? "It’s all under the same umbrella, all part of a search to express myself freely, and share it with people, and all of it comes out of the bell of my horn in the end," he says. Shulman has also taken the technique of multi-phonics for the trumpet to a new level, using his own voice while simultaneously playing the instrument. Shulman tours extensively in the U.S. and internationally with world-class instrumental groups. A sideman for three-time Grammy nominated jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon, Shulman plays trumpet on her 2000 release Soulcall. Shulman has also toured, recorded, and collaborated with such diverse artists as Joey Baron, Brian Blade, Seamus Blake, Avishai Cohen, the Complexions Dance Company, Groove Collective, Jason Lindner, Joe Lovano, Tony Malaby, John Medeski, Ben Monder, Motion Poets, Chris Potter, Joshua Redman, Eric Reed, Kurt Rosenwinkle, Dan Wall, and Kenny Werner. During what must be his sleeping hours, he is writing a method book with the working title Solo Flight. In it, he plans to focus on approaches to unaccompanied solo improvisation and how it can be a major catalyst for a musician’s development within a group structure. And, with the Shulman System Band, he has recorded While We Sleep, a CD Branford Marsalis calls "swinging." If Oberlin is in some measure responsible for what Shulman has become – and is becoming – as a musician, what is the most important lesson he learned here? Teacher of Jazz Ensembles and Trumpet Kenneth Davis was one of his professors. "I once had a conversation with Kenny Davis about what it feels like to receive musical ideas while improvising, and how to channel these ideas with the least amount of interference," says Shulman. "I told him that I wanted to feel like John Coltrane felt when he played. He understood me right away, and encouraged me to avoid picking and choosing, to go with the first impulse, and to take my time -- let the music happen by itself while I played. You won’t find this kind of insight with every teacher. Kenny’s power is in teaching people what they can’t learn from a typical music book." For his part, Davis remembers Shulman with tremendous pride. "I’ve always loved him. From the beginning, he had the skills and the desire. He never ceased to amaze me. Matthew is one of my prized guys." Shulman also credits Professor of African American Music and Chair of the Jazz Studies Program Wendell Logan with some powerful life lessons. Logan, he says, "has a very low tolerance" for nonsense. "You can sense this, and it can help you to be true to yourself, which is probably one of the most important things to which we can aspire." Oberlin’s jazz program is noted for the classical music foundation it lays down for its students. Shulman acknowledges that as a student, he chose to focus more on exploring the jazz repertoire and tradition, "which has been without a doubt, and continues to be, one of the best things for my development as an improvising musician." But he also grew up listening to his parents play classical music on the piano and violin, and he acknowledges this foundation as bedrock. "I’m very attracted to the aesthetic of clarity and development of theme often present in classical music," says Shulman. "The classical conservatory approach to playing the trumpet imparted by [Oberlin] has been invaluable in terms of being able to express myself on the instrument. "The fact that jazz majors at Oberlin are required to take classical theory and history classes is a very good thing. Jazz has traditionally taken inspiration from any and every source, classical music being no exception. I was exposed to some amazing music at Oberlin that I didn’t want to deal with at the time, but I still processed the sound. I filed it away, knowing I would come back to it when the time was right. And I have."
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