Small Jazz Ensembles Present Pleasant Lines

There are, in fact, six million and three ways to speak as the small jazz ensembles showed us. Three ensembles performed Thursday night for an appreciative audience at the Cat in the Cream. The groups presented an even and pleasurable mix of styles.

Ali Baba and His Sporty Thieves was the first group to perform, with an arrangement of two trumpets and a rhythm section composed of piano, bass, and drums. Despite their tendency to play fast tunes, they offered a nice range of more conventional jazz forms. "Joshua," the first tune they played, started with a fast head and then moved into a round of solos. The first was by junior Kwesi Skinner on trumpet followed by senior Matt Schildgen with a satisfyingly technical solo on piano. Sophomore Shanelle Jenkins on trumpet and junior Jibrali Nor on drums finished up the solos before they ended the tune with the head.

Joshua, this is for you: Sophomore Shanelle Jenkins perfored the piece "Joshua" during last night's small jazz concert at the Cat. (photo by Andrea Kamins)

The second piece was a composition by Schildgen entitled "Curiosity." After the horns finished the head, Schildgen played a melodic solo with variations of the head intertwined. Next up was sophomore Matt Asti with a bass solo, which was accompanied very nicely by Nor on the shells of his drums. The rhythm section played a section where they played off of each other before Schildgen took another solo again intertwining the head throughout. Then Jenkins took a solo before they all played the head out.

Next they played another composition, this time by Asti entitled, "Wish I would have told you less." This enjoyable tune started with a trumpet line over a reserved rhythm section. It got even better when they got to the next part of the tune where they kicked the speed up and Nor changed back and forth from a fast swing feel to a funky salsa-like beat for nice effect. After solos by Jenkins and Schildgen, the ensemble took the tune back into the slow head. The tune finished back in the fast mode with everyone playing furiously competing for the audience's attention.

The last, and unnamed, tune started with a ballad intro that showed the group's versatility before again turning into a fast swing for the head and more solos that were good but nothing spectacular.

After a brief intermission to wait for one of the players to arrivr. Juegglin' Daemon Jockeys was the next group up. A rhythm section of bass, guitar and drums backed up the horn combo of tenor saxophone and trumpet for this group. This ensemble offered a more humorous and unconventional approach to their music.

The first tune they played was "Squirrels and Pigeons," a composition by first-year trumpet player Peter Evans. The tune started with a vocal introduction over drums and bass about life as squirrels and pigeons and something about sparkling pieces of gold. The guitar and bass seemed to be randomly piecing together prearranged licks in no particular order to the apparent chaos of the drumming.

Then the horns came in loud and fast for the head. The show got real humorous when Evans began to take his solo and senior Chris Parrello the guitar player, and junior Matt Mueller, the bass player, paused to don headbands and began signalling to each other with what looked like gestures that a third base coach would use to indicate the lick that they would play.

The next song was called "Greenwich," a piece by seniors Brian Chase and Rob Reich. This tune had a really nice head with a legato melodic motion to parts of it. Parrello took a nice solo and halfway through the horns came in with an interestingly dissonant background. Then Evans soloed over the vamping of the rhythm section that sounded more like soloing itself than musical support.

The third tune they played was unnamed and began with a loud head. The song then proceeded with a solo by Evans over the rhythm section that seeme usually like noise but also contained bits by all of them together that gave it a nice feel. There was guitar distortion, some aggressive drumming by Chase, and some horn honking through the middle section of the tune. Sophomore Ian Cronin-Young, Parello and Mueller all played solos before they ended with the loud head again and some more guitar distortion.

The last group, The People, offered a more conventional approach to the music they played. Starting with "Bebop," they played the swing head and all took solos in a pretty straightforward manner.

With a little humor of their own, they tried to discuss amongst themselves what they would play next without the audience hearing them before deciding on "Waltz no.2," a composition by Evans. The head of the tune used rests very effectively to create a nice melody, and the ensemble adapted the rest and some high notes to the humor that they had going for them. Then Evans took a solo that used the same utilization of rest as the head did. First-year Steve Wood played a solo on bass before they played the head out.

On the next tune they played, first-year Chas Mortimer used mallets to really bring out the tone of the drums. The head was reasonably simple, but the solos were still interesting. First-year Cesar Alvarez soloed first on saxophone, and then Evans joined in with him before taking it over completely. Then Wood played a nice solo on bass using multiple notes and harmony with himself as only a bass player can.

They finished with "Take the A Train." The horns started the head and then the drums and bass joined in to finish up the head. More solos by Evans and Wood came next. Then Evans and Alvarez started trading fours with the drummer in a very competitive and entertaining nature before playing the head out to finish up the night.

Overall there was a variety of song selection and soloing style that made for a nice performance. The small jazz ensembles presented a picture of different interpretations within a single discipline.