George Groebner/The Mossy Log
If you were asked to list the cultural pillars of the Lewis & Clark community, jazz might not be one of the first things you would come up with. However, LC has a vibrant — some might even say thriving — jazz scene on campus, with students performing in combos, big band ensembles and biweekly Coop jam sessions, in addition to private lessons and a plethora of unofficial jam sessions.
Max Taylor ’28 is a tenor saxophonist and music major who performs in the Jazz Combos class — small groups comprising drums, bass, a chordal instrument like piano or guitar and a few wind instruments. Taylor has also played in Battle of the Bands, a per-semester student music showcase/competition in the Coop, and will perform in Ivy Mead ’26’s double bass senior recital this March. This is Taylor’s fourth semester in the combos, but they say it has never gotten boring.
“When combos get assigned every semester, it’s a totally different band, because everyone brings their own stuff,” Taylor told The Mossy Log.
Jeff Leonard, the electric bass instructor and area coordinator for jazz at LC, echoed Taylor’s sentiment in an interview with The Mossy Log:
“(By) the end of the semester, each combo has sort of taken on its own personality.”
Leonard began teaching electric bass at LC in 1988 and became a faculty member for electronic music in 2001. As area coordinator, he arranges guest artist events and connects prospective students with instructors; though he noted that most of his time these days is spent teaching his electronic music courses.
“All our jazz faculty are so accomplished, not just as players but as teachers, that they don’t need a lot from me,” Leonard said.
Dan Balmer, jazz guitar faculty and director of jazz combos, was in the first jazz combo at LC over 40 years ago. In an interview with The Mossy Log, he recalled that all the members of that combo went on to illustrious careers in the music world, from becoming the president of jazz and classics for Universal Music Group, to directing early and Renaissance music at Yale. However, he notes that jazz at LC has greatly improved since then.
“My greatest pleasure of the jazz combos is just how much better they are than they were when I started. It’s not because of me. It’s because the students are better,” Balmer said.
Leonard added that progress has been gradual but substantive, especially considering the wider scope of the current climate around higher education.
“At one point we had one combo, then we had two, now we have three. It’s been slow but steady growth, and I just hope we can maintain all that,” Leonard said.
He is also proud of the increased diversity of the program, as well as of music at LC in general.
“When I first started teaching electronic music, it was all guys, and the jazz combos early on were pretty much all guys, and that is definitely not the case anymore,” Leonard said.
He also mentioned that the majority of his current electronic music students are not men.
When asked what makes jazz at LC special, Taylor and Balmer both pointed to the creativity and tenacity of the students.
“If someone has something that they want to do, they’re going to figure out how to do it. Ivy in particular has no limits on anything that she decides that she wants to do,” Taylor said, referring to Mead’s successful revival of the LC jazz big band last semester after a decades-long hiatus.
Replaced by the small combos in Balmer’s student days, the big band was brought back through weekend rehearsals and creative repertoire, with Mead serving as conductor.
“I like the fact that the students are proactive in making their own stuff happen,” Balmer said.
He mentioned Mead’s big band revival as well as Nicko Gillen ’29 hosting biweekly Coop jam sessions, which feature a rotating cast of musicians and frequently draw student audiences. In the occasional absence of drummers, other musicians step outside their comfort zones and go behind the kit to keep the beat, applying their sense of rhythm even when limited by technical experience.
Despite the students’ rigor and dedication, Taylor attested that there is little hierarchy in the LC jazz world.
“I have friends at Berklee (College of Music) who talk about other musicians they know who play the same instrument, and it sounds like everyone’s fighting for something. But at LC, everyone wants to play together, everyone wants to sound good together, and that’s just a bigger sense of community,” Taylor said.
Leonard said that the low-pressure environment is part of what makes jazz at LC so successful.
“There’s a famous quote that I play for my students in the jazz appreciation class. This guy, Artie Shaw, he’s talking about a particular big band, and he said ‘You know, they’re great players, they had a great book of songs, they were really popular, but they never made a mistake. If you never make a mistake, you’re not growing.’ The whole point is to take chances, make lots of mistakes, and from those, figure out what works for you,” Leonard said.
Opportunities are all around for LC students to play jazz. Although auditions for the combos are over for spring semester, the big band and Coop jam sessions are open to all, and no experience is required to sign up for private lessons, which are offered for all major jazz instruments as well as voice. Leonard said that faculty are ready and willing to “meet students where they are.”
“Even if your heart and soul is not into playing traditional jazz, the skills that you will learn doing that are going to be broadly applicable no matter what style of music you play,” Leonard said.
Taylor, whose influences come from all genres of music, shared a story from one of their lessons with LC saxophone instructor Dave Evans, in which Evans responded to their concerns about missing fundamental jazz knowledge.
“He said, you might be tempted to think that way, but we are all just starting where we’re starting, in the middle, and trying to look around and figure out what is going on right now. And so there’s no reason to stress yourself out. … I think about that a lot. I think it applies to a lot of things,” Taylor said.
The LC jazz scene is a talented, welcoming community open to anybody with an instrument or a singing voice.
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