By Jenna Luginbill, for the Chippewa Valley Post
At the Eau Claire Jazz Festival, every participant becomes a valuable part of the whole. Teachers, adjudicators, guest clinicians, students, performing groups and audience members all contribute a unique and necessary element to what has made this Festival a success for 52 years.
Being a participant at the Jazz Festival for the past four years has given me the opportunity not only to perform, but also to learn how I can improve my performance and find inspiration listening to clinicians and other performers.
Note: Jenna Luginbill’s review of Friday’s Jazz Festival activities can be found here.
Throughout the weekend of the 2018 Jazz Festival, I attended three master classes taught by four different professional musicians. Each one has a personal take on every concept within music, from music history to solo ideas to stylistic approaches to how you breathe before you make a sound through your instrument.
The Bob Mintzer master class I attended Friday afternoon was engaging as well as informative. Mintzer spoke of the importance of treating each note differently and knowing the structure of the chart you are performing. This is especially important during improvisation sections of songs when the soloist becomes the composer and the performer at the same time.
Mintzer followed each piece of advice with a melody or solo idea on his tenor saxophone. He utilized a classic, “Donna Lee”, to demonstrate why incorporating other individuals’ melodies and solo ideas is crucial to learning how to improvise over a solo section.
I also attended a master class on section playing for saxophones. This one was taught by Lauren Sevian, a professional bari sax player based in New York City, and Alexa Tarantino, an alto sax player who can be heard often with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. They showed the class video clips of many big bands including the DIVA Jazz Orchestra, The Mingus Big Band, and Duke Ellington’s Jazz Orchestra.
The two clinicians taught the students in attendance about playing beneath one’s section leader – playing at a volume quieter than the leader – as well as mirroring the section leader’s stylistic choices with each song. These skills are crucial to have a blended saxophone section no matter what song an ensemble is playing.
Bobby Sanabria’s master class Friday afternoon was more than just a lecture about jazz music. Sanabria started off by inviting fellow percussionists on stage to be close to his instruments and observe more closely what he was doing throughout the class. Everything Sanabria spoke of was told alongside a cowbell Hand-Jive beat, which is a five-note Afro-Cuban beat utilized today in popular music. Sanabria played on various percussion instruments including a dried gourd, cowbell, congas, and a robustly equipped drum set with various cymbals, drums and other Latin percussion instruments.
Throughout the various master classes, each clinician and guest artist had something to share with the young performers attending the festival.
Participating in the Eau Claire Jazz Festival for the past four years has been an outstanding learning experience and I feel honored to have shared this alongside my best friends and favorite fellow jazz musicians. I am proud to say that my jazz band, Eau Claire Memorial Jazz Ensemble One, took second place this year in the AA division for high schools. Thank you Eau Claire Jazz Festival for the performances and jazz immersion opportunities over the past four years.
Jenna Luginbill is a senior at Eau Claire Memorial High School, where she has played the alto saxophone in various music ensembles for four years. She was the featured vocalist for the school’s Jazz Ensemble One, which took top honors in the High School AA division at last year’s Jazz Festival and placed second this year. Luginbill grew up in a family with two musicians for parents and has been surrounded by music her entire life. She has been admitted to the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire’s Honors Program, and will enter the Nursing program there in September, with an anticipated minor in Spanish for Health Professions.