Loyola’s annual jazz festival introduced high school students to the talents of faculty, the student Jazz Ensemble, and other New Orleans musicians, including guest star Aubrey Logan and the Crescent Collective.
According to Gordon Towell, Coordinator of Jazz Studies, who directed this year’s Loyola Jazz Festival, this event is not only an inward opportunity for students to perform and work with creative professionals, but it is also a chance for Loyola to share its education to the community while also presenting what it has to offer to students in high school.
“We get quite a few students who come to our school because they get a chance to see the institution, see what’s going on energy-wise, meet our students, hear our students, so I think it’s a great event for Loyola and I’m just so happy to be part of it and get a chance to organize it,” Towell said.
This year, Towell explained, most of the attending students outside of Loyola were high schoolers, meaning Loyola was able to “show off” what it’s doing for jazz studies and other music majors.
The 57-year-old festival was established by Joey Baer, who ran the jazz Program. Baer started the festival to be an educational event to bring groups in and out of state together. The event has expanded since to include other areas.
“I get a chance to hear a lot of groups from other places. Some groups from Nashville and Atlanta this year so I get to hear jazz education from other places,” Towell said.
The festival has three main concerts: the first one is sponsored by Connie and Elaine Jones as a gift to the community, the second is the faculty concert, and the third is the guest stars and student jazz ensembles together.
“Connie was a fantastic traditional trumpet player here in town. They’ve left us a beautiful gift of money. So we have a New Orleans traditional jazz concert on a Thursday night, opening the festival,” Towell said.
The faculty concert, according to Towell, is one of the two opportunities that the faculty has to perform together in a school setting. He explained that many of them perform together outside of school, but other than the Jazz Underground Series, this event’s faculty concert is the only other time they collaborate and perform for their students
“We have a wonderful jazz faculty. We have about 14 people in our jazz faculty. It’s a matter of who’s available to perform this concert and then putting the concert together,” Towell said.
Meryl Zimmerman, an adjunct professor of jazz voice, performed in the faculty concert as one of the lead vocals. She sang Beauty of Birds by Stevie Wonder, in which saxophone instructor Jason Mingledorff did an arrangement based on Don Braden; she also performed I Didn’t Know What Time it Was, which was arranged by John Mahoney. Zimmerman explained that the process before the concert was incredibly relaxed, and staff only needed to meet once or twice before the concert.
“The beauty of this art form is that when you play this music a lot, you just kind of know the typical conventions of how the music works,” she said. “So if you know the song, you know the key, you have a chart with all the chords and all of the information, the basic information you need, you don’t necessarily need much rehearsal.”
Zimmerman believes that the concert is a great opportunity for faculty to connect through their talents after teaching separately throughout the semester.
“It’s just a lot of fun to get to sing with really good musicians who are also my friends,” she said. “And usually, we’re kind of busy doing our own thing, teaching, and so it’s nice to have that opportunity.”
Logan, the star guest for this year’s event, gave Loyola students and the students visiting clinicals, specializing in trombone and vocals. She is focused on Postmodern Jukebox and is aware of social media, according to Towell.
“She’s a wonderful performer, a wonderful artist. So we brought her in and featured her on Saturday. So that was really, really, really fun,” he said.
Towell believes that the event was a success after having worked on it since the last festival ended.
“At the end of the festival I feel wonderful that we’ve been able to share the stuff groups have learned, the performance of our student musicians. It’s really a good feeling at the end of the festival. There’s a lot of preparation up to it,” Towell said.
