On the Campus - November 3, 1999
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That touch of jazz
An American art form comes of age in Princeton

by Katherine Zoepf '00

If it's not exactly New Orleans, Princeton is becoming an exciting place for jazz. Every fall, the JazzFeast Palmer Square attracts hundreds of students and local residents with sophisticated jazz acts that play away on a September afternoon. Then it's the students' turn. Four or five times a year, jazz enthusiasts pour into Richardson Auditorium to hear students perform in one of the Princeton University Jazz Ensembles' concerts.

While the 100th anniversary of Duke Ellington's birth made 1999 a year of celebration in the jazz world as a whole, Princeton jazz-lovers will have their own reason to celebrate in 2000. This spring marks the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Jazz Ensembles.

A concert on May 6 will commemorate the event in high Tiger style and serve as a reminder of just how far jazz has come at Princeton. What started as a loosely knit group of students meeting on their own to play a kind of music not often associated with the Ivy League has become no fewer than three separate jazz ensembles, involving more than 30 Princeton students and directed by jazz trumpeter and composer Anthony D. J. Branker '80.

Under Branker's leadership, these student musicians and composers have increasingly been making their mark on the jazz community as a whole. Last year, Princeton's Monk-Mingus Jazz Ensemble won Down Beat magazine's award for best college jazz instrumental group, surprising even the Princeton music department, and beating out far more well-known jazz powerhouses like the Eastman School of Music and Oberlin College.

Branker is the one-man dynamo behind the jazz program. After graduating from Princeton with a degree in music and a certificate in Afro-American studies, Branker went on to receive a master's in jazz pedagogy at the University of Miami. When he returned to Princeton in 1989, it was as a visiting associate professor of music, and with the goal of greatly expanding participation in the ensembles, attracting guest artists to campus, and turning Princeton into what he calls "a little jazz center in its own right."

In all these, Branker has overwhelmingly succeeded. Now, the jazz program includes two 17-piece big bands, the Concert Jazz Ensemble and Jazz Ensemble II, and one smaller experimental group, whose specific focus changes on a yearly basis. Well-known jazz artists-including trumpeter Jon Faddis, alto saxophonist Benny Carter, and the Dr. Billy Taylor Trio-come frequently to campus, performing in concert with students, and giving master classes.

Branker's vision of Princeton as the third point on a sort of jazz triangle with New York and Philadelphia seems to be coming true. Princeton students can pursue the more academic and experimental aspects of their art on campus, then travel to city jazz clubs on the weekends, honing improvisational skills, making professional connections, or, frequently, listening to their director play. Branker still finds time for composing and performing, and plays regularly at the Sweet Basil jazz club in Greenwich Village.

The Jazz Ensembles traditionally have their biggest concert in February, and when last year's concert, a rare performance of Duke Ellington's sacred music, happened to fall on Alumni Day, ensemble members were astonished by the alumni turnout.

"We've been making an effort to reach out more to alumni, but we were very, very encouraged by that concert," says Keigo Hirakawa '00, a pianist in the ensembles since his freshman year. "We saw so much support from alumni, from local residents. It encouraged us to produce an album."

Most of the members of Branker's jazz ensembles aren't even music majors. Engineers, scientists, history majors, even a librarian-they are brought together by a common love of the music and a shared excitement for pushing the boundaries of the art. Branker frequently gives his students pieces which have never before been performed.

"We get to work on original scores rather than published, watered-down versions," says Hirakawa. "Its a huge undertaking." At first, Princeton's music department hardly noticed what it had on its hands. "The music department here is still very much focused on musicology and composition," Charles Silio '99 said in an interview in May. "And now that the jazz program is having a lot of very high-profile successes, they're starting to notice that they've got something really good on their hands."

"Now," Hirakawa says, "we have the best jazz band in the Ivy League."

This fall, the Jazz Composers' Ensemble will perform a selection of its recent work on November 13. On December 4, the Concert Jazz Ensemble will perform Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn's adaptations of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, and Grieg's Peer Gynt Suites. For information, call the Richardson Auditorium Box Office at (609) 258-5000.


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