Beauty Surrounds Us – Works by Members of the Oberlin Conservatory Jazz Faculty
Works by Members of Oberlin Conservatory Jazz FacultyRecorded: January, 2006
Released: August 2007
“Jazz is very much alive and well at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. That’s a beautiful thing!”
– Bobby Jackson
Gary Bartz, saxophone
Marcus Belgrave and Kenny Davis, trumpet
Peter Dominguez, bass
Robin Eubanks, trombone
Bob Ferrazza, guitar
Billy Hart, drums
Dan Wall, piano
Wendell Logan, composer
About the art . . .
Cover: Romare Bearden (American, 1911-1988)
Out Chorus, 1979-1980
Photo-etching and aquatint
22-7/16 x 30 in. (57 x 76 cm)
Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College
Gift of Nancy and Mark Edelman, 1986
Art © Romare Bearden Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
| 1. | Shoo-Fly (MuziMu/ASCAP)
Composer: Wendell Logan |
Length: 6:13 | (mp3 sample: 1:00) | Play |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2. | Back in the Day (Robin Eubanks Music/SESAC)
Composer: Robin Eubanks |
Length: 6:16 | (mp3 sample: 1:00) | Play |
| 3. | Dark Feelings/A Little Love Remains (IKENEN/BMI)
Composer: Neal Creque (arrangement by Peter Dominguez)
|
Length: 6:24 | (mp3 sample: 1:00) | Play |
| 4. | All My Love (Edmarsyl Music/BMI)
Composer: Marcus Belgrave |
Length: 9:20 | (mp3 sample: 1:00) | Play |
| 5. | Beauty Surrounds Us (Pik N Fin Music/ASCAP)
Composer:Bob Ferrazza |
Length: 10:02 | ||
| 6. | Carol’s Carol (VetoWall Music/BMI)
Composer: Dan Wall |
Length: 10:52 | ||
| 7. | GM3 (G. Bartz Pub. Co./BMI)
Composer: Gary Bartz |
Length: 6:07 | ||
| 8. | Remembrances (MuziMu/ASCAP)
Composer: Wendell Logan |
Length: 5:19 |
The award-winning musicians heard on this recording—saxophonist Gary Bartz, trumpeters Marcus Belgrave and Kenny Davis, bassist Peter Dominguez, trombonist Robin Eubanks, guitarist Bob Ferrazza, drummer Billy Hart, and pianist Dan Wall—are all members of the renowned Jazz Studies Department at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, chaired by Professor of African American Music Wendell Logan.
These tunes by Logan, Bartz, Belgrave, the late pianist and Oberlin faculty member Neal Creque, Eubanks, Ferrazza, and Wall, constitute what jazz critic Bobby Jackson calls “a cooperative effort … a wide-ranging palette of original compositions, arrangements, moods and textures.”
As evidenced by this recording, Oberlin’s jazz studies faculty includes composers and instrumentalists who, in addition to offering intensive instruction at Oberlin, maintain active performing careers throughout the world.
The Oberlin Conservatory of Music incorporated this great American art form into its curriculum in 1972 and began offering a major in jazz studies in 1989. Jazz studies students at Oberlin receive a premier undergraduate degree that prepares them well for careers as professional jazz musicians and for advanced study in jazz.
The Oberlin Jazz Studies Department is held in such high regard that in 2005, Cleveland businessman and Oberlin alumnus Stewart Kohl and his wife, Donna, committed a $5 million gift to Oberlin that will support the construction of the Bertram and Judith Kohl Building, the new home of Oberlin jazz studies. The gift is believed to be the largest ever given specifically for the support of jazz education at a college in the United States. Not long after the Kohl gift was announced, Oberlin received the largest donation in its history from the Kulas Foundation in support of the building project.
The Oberlin Conservatory of Music, founded in 1865 and situated amid the intellectual vitality of Oberlin College since 1867, is the oldest continuously operating conservatory in the United States. Renowned internationally as a professional music school of the highest caliber and called a “national treasure” by the Washington Post, its alumni have gone on to illustrious careers in all aspects of the serious music world.
Numerous Oberlin alumni have achieved success in the jazz idiom, among them keyboardist Ted Baker; pianist and composer Stanley Cowell; bassist, composer, and arranger Leon Lee Dorsey (producer of this album); pianist, arranger, and producer Allen Farnham; flutist Paul Horn; bassist Ben Jaffe; composer and pianist Jon Jang; writer, composer, and saxophonist James McBride; and trumpeter, trombonist, and composer Michael Mossman, among many others.