BC Jazz Ensemble

Last week, Monday Morning paid a visit to the BC Jazz Ensemble as they readied for their April 15 recital in Levenson Hall at 7:30 PM.

After letting the musicians warm up and tune their instruments, Guest Director Paul Corn sat at the piano and gave instructions about the music sheet the players had in front of them. A Corn original tune, Idris and Ava was composed to honor the children recently born to two of his close friends. One is tenor saxophonist Beavin Lawrence, whose solos draw inspiration from Idris, his second child (and first son).
    Corn then stood in front of the band, picked up the alto sax and started the rehearsals, stopping frequently to indicate how to bring out the best in his fellow musicians. During a quick break, MM spoke with some of the musicians who confessed enjoying the limelight.

“I play classic, too, but jazz is my first love,” said Hyun Joo Lee, a third-year student, who plays the alto sax and the flute. A lover of Cannonball Adderley’s music, Hyun picked up the sax in her senior year at high school. “This is a lot of hard work but also a lot of fun.”

Tenor sax Bhinda Keïdel, on the other hand, is a first-year graduate student who attended the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio. “I’ve been playing as a pro for a while,” she said. “But I decided to come back to college because I need the degree to teach in school.” Though Keidel is partial to the music of sax giant John Coltrane, she has played Caribbean music, including salsa and Haitian compass, since she finished high school.
     Before the Ensemble started rehearsing trumpeter Thad Jones’s Rejoice, a classic big-band melody, we were able to snap a few shots of bass player Sean Ormiston, Karuba Hilliard and Sarah Corman (both trombone players and admirers of J.J. Johnson), and trumpeter Kristina O’Shea, whose solo during Rejoice filled the auditorium.

 
Sean Ormiston and Bhinda Keïdel

Guest Director Paul Corn

Beavin Lawrence


Kristina O'Shea


Karuba Hilliard and Sarah Corman