[music]

Tiffany Hanson: This is All Of It. I'm Tiffany Hanson in for Alison Stewart. This week, Duke Ellington would be celebrating his 125th birthday, and soon Jazz at Lincoln Center will be commemorating Ellington's birthday with their 29th annual, Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival. For the competition, 15 high school jazz bands around the country are selected to come to New York and perform and compete at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

One of the bands selected this year happens to hail from Staten Island, students from Susan E. Wagner High School. Jazz at Lincoln Center is Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival is taking place May 9th through 11th. With us now to preview the festival is Todd Stoll, jazz trumpeter, Vice President of Education at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Hello.

Todd Stoll: Good afternoon.

Tiffany Hanson: Sherman Irby, lead alto saxophonist for Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

Sherman Irby: Hello.

Tiffany Hanson: Hello. Paul Corn, assistant principal, and band director at Staten Islands, Susan E. Wagner High School, who has also brought along all of his students for us. Hello, Paul.

Paul Corn: Hello.

Tiffany Hanson: You know what? No better way to get started than with a little music. We will hear Rent Party Blues from the Susan E. Wagner High School students.

Paul Corn: One, two. One two three.

[MUSIC - Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges: Rent Party Blues]

Tiffany Hanson: That was the Susan E. Wagner High School band performing Rent Party Blues. They're one of 15 finalists for this year's Jazz at Lincoln Center, Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival. Todd, that's a mouthful.

Todd Stoll: Wow. [laughs] I tried to make it shorter for you. They won't let me do that. Now look, it's so exciting just to hear Jazz at Lincoln Center, one of our primary founding tenants says that all Jazz is modern and to hear a group of young people play some music from the late 1920s. It's very meaningful.

Tiffany Hanson: Right. Sherman, what's your response on hearing that?

Sherman Irby: Oh, it's fantastic. I think back to when I was in high school, I had none of this. Now, this would be offered to all these high school students all over the country. It's amazing. To hear them play this chart with all that enthusiasm and care, and want to try to be as perfect as they can and can't be, but enjoy the moment of playing it, and learning from it, which is something that's beautiful about Duke Ellington's music and always something you can learn from it.

Tiffany Hanson: Well, I'll ask you to project what Duke Ellington might have thought, but he probably wouldn't have been so precious about it, would he? That it has to be perfect?

Sherman Irby: No, no, because life is not perfect.

Tiffany Hanson: Right.

Sherman Irby: Jazz is a reflection of life. The joy, just the act of doing it, that's the thing that you get out of it.

Todd Stoll: Yes, it's the intent. The intent. If you listen to Ellington's recordings, there's no two recordings that are the same, and some of them of the same composition are wildly different. Jimmy Hamilton used to tell our band.

Sherman Irby: That's right.

Todd Stoll: The band was founded at the Jazz Lincoln Center Orchestra with the surviving members of the Duke Ellington Orchestra. The great clarinetist Jimmy Hamilton, who'd been in the band for almost 30 years, said, "This is Duke Ellington's music. It's going to be different, personalize your parts." It was something that we tried to get across to the kids. The pressure of the competition makes folks strive. It gives you a laser-like focus on things. The intent behind it is, music is the art of the invisible and Duke understood that.

Tiffany Hanson: Paul, do you feel that pressure?

Paul Corn: No. No, I feel happy. I think of what Sherman said. When I was a kid, we couldn't play any Duke Ellington music unless you knew someone who had it. Maybe someone who was in a band somewhere that had a copy, but you couldn't buy it. That's one of the gifts that Jazz Lincoln Center has given the whole country, really the whole world. Now you can get hundreds of Ellington charts plus great other artists that they featured.

Tiffany Hanson: For people who don't know, charts means like music.

Paul Corn: The music, yes.

Tiffany Hanson: The music. Yes.

Paul Corn: I don't feel pressure. I feel happy. We're about to go do one of the most fun things you can ever do, playing an instrument surrounded by students all over the country who want to do the same thing. How often you get fortunate enough to be surrounded by like-minded people who have same goal and vibe and appreciation for each other? We were in it last year and we knew it would be fun, and it was even better than we could have hoped for. All we're getting ready for it this year, it was like, "Well, we want to try and have that much fun again," because it is not easy. We're happy.

Tiffany Hanson: Hearing the stories about Duke Ellington and the music, how do you convey that to your students? Does it inform their playing, do you think?

Paul Corn: Definitely. We try to talk about the time period and social circumstances and just the reality of the country and the time. This first piece we played is so early Duke, and you feel and hear the New Orleans roots in it and a Rent Party. We talked about anyone who know what a Rent Party is, which we didn't at first, but now we know, and we try to be authentic in our intent, in our emotion of what we play.

We're never going to sound like Duke Ellington, no one does. [chuckles] We can have the same intent and desire behind it and that's our goal. Yes, we try to play as perfectly as we can because that's what we strive for. The reality is none of us will ever be perfect and that's okay. The intent and the authenticity is the goal.

Todd Stoll: You could create the perfect feeling. It's about the feeling of the music. The music has things intrinsic in it that are part of our shared humanity. Duke was really aware of that feeling and the band. We try to get people to understand that it's not just about the technical aspects, but it's about the feeling the music can create and bring us together.

Tiffany Hanson: I don't think there's any-- well, there probably is, but I can't imagine someone who hasn't heard the name Duke Ellington, Especially in this city.

Sherman Irby: We would hope.

Tiffany Hansen: We would hope. We're doing it. We're working on it, we're going to fix that--

Paul Corn: Different timing.

Tiffany Hansen: Yes, we're going to fix that today. Just tell us Sherman, why is he such a foundational figure in jazz?

Sherman Irby: He encompassed everything. The sophistication of melodic and harmonic ability, the mastery of those things. He took some of the European classical traditions and folk music and New Orleans music and put it all together and added the things that he learned in his upbringing as far as music was concerned. He had all this stuff. In his arrangements and his compositions, it had a sophistication that was timeless.

When you play a composition by him, you learn something every time you play it. It's like there's another gem in there, just like all great music like Beethoven, like Bach. It's the same type of thing. That's why I think it's so special. He was the-- I don't know, the guiding light to everybody else that came after him during this time and after him about how this music should be presented.

Tiffany Hansen: We're going to hear more Duke Ellington in a minute. We're going to hear Star Crossed Lovers. Paul, I'll talk to you about that in a second. We're going to just take a quick break. You are listening to All Of It. I'm Tiffany Hansen in for Alison Stewart. More Duke Ellington on the way.

[MUSIC]

Tiffany Hansen: This is All Of It. I'm Tiffany Hansen in for Alison Stewart. We've been hearing Staten Island's Susan E. Wagner High School band. Paul, we're going to hear another tune here. What is it?

Paul Corn: This is Star Cross Lovers, one of Duke's most beautiful and meaningful ballads.

Tiffany Hansen: What year was this putting you on the spot?

Paul Corn: '58.

Sherman Irby: '58. 1958.

Paul Corn: 1958.

Tiffany Hansen: '58. All right. The song, the piece, the song.

Paul Corn: Either one is good.

Tiffany Hansen: It's called Star Crossed Lovers. Let's hear it.

Paul Corn: Thank you. It's from Duke Ellington Shakespearean's Suite. It depicts Romeo and Juliet.

Tiffany Hansen: Oh, I like that. Okay, good context. Thank you, Paul.

[MUSIC - Duke Ellington: Star Crossed Lovers]

Tiffany Hansen: Those were students from Susan E. Wagner High School on Staten Island. We've been talking about the Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival taking place at Jazz at Lincoln Center, May 9th through 11th. Todd Stoll is jazz trumpeter and Vice President of Education of Jazz at Jazz Lincoln Center. Todd, why is teaching jazz so important?

Todd Stoll: Teaching jazz, I believe, allows you the maximum amount of freedom of expression within the understanding of the sacrifice of what it means to be in a group. The two things that I think America probably does the best according to our constitution and our way of life, is that you can be yourself, but there's a sacrifice to the greatness of all of us coming together that jazz music teaches us. Then there's also the blues aspect of it, which means you have to face adversity with persistent optimism. Things are not always going to be perfect, but we'll be all right. We'll get through this.

Tiffany Hansen: Sherman, is there an optimism in Duke Ellington's music?

Sherman Irby: All over it. I was just listening to them perform and what was of note is the way that Duke used tension and release. A period of unrest, it may be just one second, but that release because of the tension, because of that strife, the release of that, the optimism that comes after that, it just feels so good to have that. Again, it's about life, and I think that's the beauty of Duke Ellison's music. It does reflect life, the good and the bad.

Todd Stoll: Duke understood the reconciliation of opposites.

Sherman Irby: Oh, yes.

Todd Stoll: That's what that is.

Sherman Irby: If you do something bad, you hope that something good will come after.

Tiffany Hansen: How old was Young Sherman when Sherman first learned about Duke Ellington?

Sherman Irby: I learned about Duke Ellington when I was in the 10th grade, so about 16 years old. It was only the song Take The "A" Train. The first thing I heard about Duke Ellington was actually Stevie Wonder doing Sir Duke. It's terrible. I'm from Alabama and down there we didn't have a first-in jazz program in the high schools. That's why I said it's so fantastic that they have that here and that this movement is happening all over the country. I did not understand Duke at that time. The older I've gotten, the more I start to understand it.

I think I might have understood it more if I had this type of training, this kind of just being around the music, get a chance to hear it as often, and someone to explain what it is. What am I hearing? They're getting the opportunity to have somebody explain what it is that they're hearing, and then help them understand what they're feeling after they play it. If I'd had that, I--

Tiffany Hansen: Paul, you're in charge of that understanding at your school. How do you approach that? How do you approach helping young people come to an understanding about what jazz is, what it represents? As Todd was saying to our country, to us, it's the American art form. How do you approach that?

Paul Corn: I think it starts with a hook. Most people, young people, maybe any age person, they need to be interested in it for some reason first, so finding something that they like about it. Now there's. Now, this is my 18th year at Wagner High School. Now, the hook is a little built-in because the band has been around for a while and it's fun and it sounds good, and people who play instruments and like it, they know about it.

Just playing Blues & Roots for them by Charles Mingus. Any kid who likes playing an instrument, all of a sudden now they might want to play some jazz. Every day I have The Blues by Count Basie with Joe Williams singing. Anyone who likes music is all of a sudden going to be, "I think I might want to do that." We talk about it with the music staff in my school a lot, where the more advanced they are, the more we can dig in and get to the depth of the music and the inner part.

When you're struggling to just play the right notes and make a sound and know where your fingers go, that could be quite a lot. The students playing here today, they've put in a tremendous amount of work and effort to get this far, to be able to get that deep into the music.

Tiffany Hanssen: It's truly an honor for your school to be part of this competition.

Paul Corn: Oh, yes. It's an honor. It's an honor to play Duke's music, whether it's a competition or not, but to be able to-- we talk about it a lot. Competitions are good if you use them the right way. It's fun to be competitive. There's nothing wrong with being competitive, but the competition doesn't define their intent and their authenticity. It's a proud moment and a congratulatory moment that they've reached a level to be able to make it in with their peers at such a high level.

We love that part of it. Then the community, it's like, we were part of the New York community, but now we're more part of the United States community with all these other bands, and directors, and students of a like mind on a similar mission.

Tiffany Hanssen: Todd, there are 15 bands from around the country that are coming in for this competition. Just give us a little background on how that all comes about.

Todd Stoll: It's our 29th year. We've distributed almost 400,000 charts to over 7,000 schools, 55,000 bands. Over a million students have played this music. Every year bands submit recordings. We have a panel of experts that adjudicate them. All the bands get feedback written in comments. Then there's another round where the finalists are chosen. We have the country divided into five regions not unlike NCAA basketball. We pick the top three from each region to come to New York City.

Tiffany Hanssen: Got it. We have been talking with, that was Todd Stoll, jazz trumpeter, Vice President of Education at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Todd, thank you for coming in.

Todd Stoll: Thank you.

Tiffany Hanssen: Sherman Irby, lead alto saxophonist for jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Sherman, a pleasure.

Sherman Irby: My pleasure.

Tiffany Hanssen: And Paul Corn, assistant principal band director at Staten Island's Susan E. Wagner High School. Paul, I would like to go out on music. I have on my list Blues-- you're going to have to say it.

[laughter]

Paul Corn: Blues A La Machito.

Tiffany Hanssen: Okay. Tell us about that.

Paul Corn: This was a great piece by the Machito Orchestra. This was part of the music featured last year with Essentially Ellington Competition & Festival. For the last number of years, they've featured different artists, which has been great, so now the whole country has access to Machito, one of the great Latin bands, the Palladium era. You couldn't get any of this music until last year. Now there are bands all over the country who are getting to play some Machito, which is a real blessing. It's just so much fun.

Tiffany Hanssen: Sounds great.

Paul Corn: That's what we got in place.

Tiffany Hanssen: Let's do it.

Paul Corn: Okay.

Tiffany Hanssen: Students from Susan E. Wagner High School Jazz at Lincoln Center, Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival is taking place May 9th through 11th. Again, gentlemen, thank you, and students, thank you.

Todd Stoll: Jazz.org for more information.

Tiffany Hanssen: Jazz.org for more info.

Paul Corn: One, two. One, two, three.

[MUSIC - Machito: Blues A La Machito]

[00:27:57] [END OF AUDIO]

 

Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.