Author: seabreeze
Date: 2017-08-25 00:28
NOCCA is a very selective admission school, requiring an individual audition and usually an impressive academic record. I tutor one NOCCA student, a musical theater major, who also attends regular high school full time, and after watching that student prepare for the musical "Titanic," I can attest to the intensity and dedication required by NOCCA. The classical music program at NOCCA, which Wynton Marsalis completed, was started by Bert Braud, a composer, arranger, and clarinetist who studied with Mitchell Lurie. The jazz studies program was founded by Wynton's father, Ellis, and has graduated such well-known players as Terence Blanchard, Nicholas Payton, and Trombone Shorty.
Ellis Marsalis's knowledge covers the entire history of jazz (he was Al Hirt's pianist and arranger for some time) but he prefers to play in the mainstream modern style, so it is no surprise that the students at NOCCA generally tend in that direction also--post bop but not often avant guarde. A trad specialist could emerge from NOCCA but offhand I can't think of one. Interestingly, Pete Fountain's friend Al Hirt was not only classically trained but also much more interested in modern jazz than Pete was. Though first impressed by Ziggy Elman (powerful trumpet with Goodman) and Harry James, Hirt genuinely enjoyed bop and post-bop styles, listened hard to Gillespie and Clifford Brown, often expressed admiration for West-Coast trumpeters Pete Condoli (who subbed for Hirt) and D. Fagerquist, and enjoyed playing "Lullaby of Birdland," "Pick Yourself Up," and other rather boppish pieces. Musicians still talk about the time that Woody Herman was in town to play the Bacchus carnival ball and his lead trumpet, Bill Chase, got sick. Hirt stepped in and sight read the difficult Chase parts, with no "Dixieland" stylistic intrusions at all, as if he had always been the Herman band's lead trumpet. I suspect the kind of training you get at NOCCA might lead to that kind of versatility also. (Hirt went to the Cincinnati Conservatory long before schools offered jazz programs and was taught by Frank Simon, who goes back to the Sousa and Herbert Clark days).
Hirt gave Wynton his first trumpet; in the small world of New Orleans Jazz, everything seems to go full circle.
Post Edited (2017-09-16 07:02)
|
|