It's easy to listen to. It's improvised. It's all that jazz that was resonating throughout Letkemann Theatre at R.D. Parker Collegiate Oct. 29-30 at the annual NorMan Jazz Festival, showcasing Northern Manitoba's finest high school jazz bands and the clinicians who work with them all weekend, representing some of the finest jazz musicians in the province.
While it may be easy listening with jazz's trademark improvisations by performers, it's not easy to sound that easy. The less glamorous trademark of jazz, noted R.D. Parker music teacher and jazz impresario Kevin Lewis, is lots of behind the scenes hard work in practice to make it all sound so fluid and easy come show time.
Lewis directed the two R.D. Parker entries in this year's festival - the junior jazz ensemble, whose offerings included "All Blues," fourth track on Miles Davis' 1959 album Kind of Blue - and the senior Adrenaline Jazz Ensemble, who offered up Duke Ellington's classic "Blue Ramble," recorded in 1932.
Anna Jardine directed all three of Flin Flon's entries - junior, intermediate and senior jazz ensembles. Heather Gibson directed The Pas' lone entry, a senior jazz ensemble, which performed Paul McCartney's "Yesterday" from the Beatles' 1965 album Help!
The young high school musicians from R.D. Parker, Hapnot Collegiate in Flin Flon and Margaret Barbour Collegiate Institute in The Pas, found themselves playing jazz for about eight hours on Saturday, Lewis said, but enjoyed a short day compared to clinicians Greg Gatien on alto sax; Thompson's own R.D. Parker alumnus Dan Pegus on bass; Greg Edwards, director of bands at Westwood Collegiate in Winnipeg on trumpet; the incomparable, Steve Kirby, director of jazz studies at the University of Manitoba, also bass; Will Bonness, who also teaches in the jazz studies program at the University of Manitoba, as well as teaching at Canadian Mennonite University, on piano; Rob Chrol, a band teacher at Gimli High School on tenor sax; Dan Steinhilber, who jointly heads up the music program at Transcona Collegiate in Winnipeg on trumpet; and Eric Platz, from Boston, on drums. The clinicians worked 13-hour days, noted Lewis.
Gatien, from Halifax, a music professor in Brandon University's acclaimed music program, has been coming up to Thompson since he first met R.D. Parker Collegiate student musicians at the October 2009 NorMan Jazz Festival, held in Flin Flon, and came away impressed with their work. Platz also teaches jazz studies in the School of Music at Brandon University.
