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A monthly round-up of press coverage of Eastman School of Music programs, concerts, students, faculty, alumni, and activities, prepared by the Office of Communications.
Selected Coverage September 2009: Download PDF here
September 2009 Highlights
September 12 2009: Smart and Sassy
Jeff McLeod is a jazz pianist who has collaborated with many of Saskatchewan’s top artists in a variety of genres. In the jazz and blues world he's teamed up with Jon McCaslin, Jack Semple, Dean McNeil, Mark DeJong, and Kris Craig, among others. He's a member of Jason’s Plumb’s band ‘The Willing’. He’s toured the country in Juno-award winning singer Serena Ryder's band, performed with Joel Fafard, Andrea Menard and many, many others. Suffice to it say he's one of the busiest piano and keyboard players in the province.
Jeff is currently living in Rochester, New York while he begins his Doctoral program in jazz studies at the famed Eastman School of Music. In this concert from the CBC Regina Galleria Jeff is joined by Carlo Petrovitch on uprgith bass and drummer Roy Sydiaha. (Also reported by The Regina Leader-Post)
A Microcosm of Cutting-Edge Music
At a time when most longstanding jazz festivals are struggling, a relative newcomer, the New Languages Festival, is thriving . . .
New Languages kicks off with a performance by the Respect Sextet, a group that has created one of the most compelling recordings of the year, “Sirius Respect: The Music of Sun Ra and Stockhausen” (Avant). Trumpeter Eli Asher, 30, said that the work of both composers—one a pioneer of avant-garde jazz and the other a key innovator in contemporary classical music—was informed by “mysticism, astrology, a self-constructed cosmology, intertwining compositional languages, and a total absorption into their personal worlds.” In addition, both were early advocates of the synthesizer. There are many pieces by Sun Ra, a Chicago bandleader, that can be easily adapted to jazz sextet, but far fewer of Stockhausen’s works have such flexibility. The group leaned heavily on the German composer’s “Zodiac Suite.” The recording’s 13 tunes are presented with care and unity. By the final track, Mr. Stockhausen’s "Capricorn" and Sun Ra’s great "Saturn" mesh perfectly.
The band began eight years ago in Rochester, N.Y., where the musicians attended the Eastman School of Music, and it continued in New York, where at one point four members temped for Bear Stearns. “At one point there were 15 or so Eastman graduates working at Bear Stearns,” said saxophonist Josh Rutner, 28, who now works at the private equity firm (and Bear Stearns spinoff) Irving Place Capital. “Every lunch break was a class reunion.”
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