All That Jazz

It’s spring break for Concordia students this week. I know, it’s the end of February…. BUT the snow is melting. It’s a bit cooler today, but I can live with anything above 20 degrees. Seriously, this has been a tried and true winter.

Anyway, this past weekend, my fellow members of Vox 9 and I traversed south for Creston, Iowa. We were attending the 11th annual vocal jazz festival at SWCC (Southwestern Community College). This is THE place to go for any serious vocal jazz singer. It was incredible to see these students perform their stuff in a tiny town. Their concert choir is outstanding too. They sang “Sleep” by Eric Whitacre (which Christus sang last year–phenomenal piece of music) and the ending to Bach’s Singet Dem Herrn motet (lots of 16th notes–Christus is singing the whole “war horse” this spring. We’ve learned all the notes now!).

I really don’t know anything about the vocal jazz world. It’s a very interesting branch of voice performance. In fact, I haven’t done any work with singing until my senior year of high school. I decided to join the choir (couldn’t sight-read for the life of me), and it was a blast.

That day, we heard probably over 100 songs from the 27 groups that attended. The final concert at the end was an incredible performance by New York Voices, a professional jazz group from New York (obviously). They’ve been together for over 20 years. I’m marveled at the precision and the vibrancy they bring to their music.

For vocal jazz, you definitely have to feel the music. You also have to dance. It’s kind of this strange controlled atmosphere of being technically proficient while being spontaneous at the same time. This is the same kind of balance you need for writing fiction, writing plays, and acting. It’s uncanny how the creative/performing art worlds are kind of blending together.

The judges liked Vox 9. They didn’t really know what to expect from this humble group. We’re just over a year old, and we practice 90 minutes a week. The music is hard (especially for the bass, which is a pretty easy part in choral music), and I think we got a great handle on it. We could use some more work of feeling relaxed and really enjoying the music. I think we’ll hone on this skill before our Coffee House performance on April 3 in the Westlund Black Box Theatre.

Well, I’m off to see a preview of Macalester’s production of “The Threepenny Opera.” It’s all about Mac the Ripper, and I’m really pumped.