Matthew Wengerd's Weblog

The USF Jazz Blog got a much appreciated nod from be.jazz, a Belgian jazz blog. Check out this visually appealing, insightful blog.

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As an undergrad, I talked a lot about the fact that music students do not get the kinds of breaks that math, education, business, etc. majors get. We have to practice through Spring Break and Christmas Break and all Summer; meanwhile, the others are at Panama City Beach or skiing in Vale. Yes, I know many of them do internships or work career-related Holiday jobs. As Musicians, however, it is a necessity that we not take time away from our major. An occasional weekend or two is often just what the Dr. prescribed, but it is completely unacceptable for a music student to need to get re-acquainted with their instrument the first week of classes.

Unfortunately, this is not something I practiced (pun intended) during my undergrad years. Now is a different story, though. This was the first weekday morning of my 2007 Spring Break and I spent it warming up, relishing the practice time. I even got to spend time in the front yard, warming up and waving at the neighbors!

I now look at breaks as an opportunity to put away all the distractions of classes and ensembles and focus on my instrument, cleaning up technique and intonation, learning new tunes and more ways to play a scale.

What are you doing with your Spring Break?

Last night was a hit at the Westchase Starbucks with Rich Van Voorst and Mark Feinman. I have played with them at the Waters and Anderson Starbucks as a sub on several occasions and enjoyed this change of scenery.

Westchase is one of those upscale suburban developments that thinks it is a posh European town, with a marketplace area and cafes.

Truth be told, the houses are cookie-cutter and you don’t always experience the sense of community planners had intended. Nonetheless, the Starbucks here had quite a bit of charm, with the London phonebooth out front, the ample cafe-style seating (I guess they all have that), a the carved, wooden Starbucks sign. We played outdoors from 7:30-9:30.

Rich, a candidate for MM in Jazz Comp at USF, works at this particular store and has worked to get weekly live jazz in four West Tampa/Pinellas County Starbucks locations! I really appreciate Rich’s efforts to make live jazz happen wherever it can and am in awe of management who is willing to see the value of having such music, even if the numbers don’t always come out favorably. Everytime I’ve played a Starbucks gig with these guys, the turnout has been great and the response extremely positive.

I have been in contact with management at several Polk County Starbucks about creating weekly live jazz in Lakeland and am excited to see what may come out of this. If you’re a jazz musician looking for a gig, consider contacting your local Starbucks manager about setting up a weekly. Just make sure you promote like there’s no tomorrow!

Today was (reportedly) the last Taste of the Arts event hosted by the College of Visual and Performing Arts at USF. Taste of the Arts is an afternoon of free food and entertainment from the CVPA designed to bring students and staff from across the campus into the CVPA.

Local Restaurants offered free food from 12:00-1:00 while the Herd of Thunder Marching Band and members of the USF Jazz department played. Students from Theater, Visual Arts, and Dance provided entertainment as well.

Wish you were there…

Bassist and Director of New Orleans’ Preservation Hall, Ben Jaffe, appeared at the USF Monday Night Jazz Series on Monday 24 February 2007. Every Monday Night Jazz program this year has been excellent, but this one was by far the best for a multitude of reasons.

Being a bass player, I was excited to have a bass player come to do MNJ and give a masterclass after the semester of trumpets. I wasn’t, however, entirely sold on the idea of a MNJ devoted to New Orleans Jazz. I am not into trad jazz of any sort and, though I understand its importance in developing my jazz world view and that the music I tend to play wouldn’t exist without it, I just don’t really enjoy listening to it; it’s not my typical choice for “cruise” music.

I picked Ben up from the hotel Monday morning so he could get acquainted with his bass-for-a-day. Right off the bat, I was sold. Ben is much younger than my preconceived notions of a Preservation Hall guy and has far-reaching interests (musical and otherwise) that reminded me that we can only pigeon-hole ourselves. Not only that, but he’s also a gut player. I had just put wound gut (Pirastro Olives) on my bass last week, an old set that I had removed from another bass years ago, and was experimenting with that sound. Ben didn’t travel with his bass, but asked, instead, for any old bass, as long as it has adjusters. For most people, bridge adjusters are used to ensure the action is low enough to make a bass comfortable to play. For Ben, it was to ensure he could get his action high enough!

Ben put and unwound G and D on one of the University’s old Juzeks and kept tuning it for the next several minutes while we talked. He left them almost a third above pitch and, by the masterclass half an hour later, they had dropped well over a fifth! I can see why steel strings were welcomed by the bass community with open arms.


The masterclass centered around a combo that had prepared some music specifically for this event. Ben talked about the differences between Dixieland and New Orleans Jazz and about the roots of the music, about Jazz Funerals and Mardi Gras. His father had played tuba in the band, a mantle which Ben was plenty capable of taking on himself. He worked with USF bassist John Shea on slap technique and drummer Mark Feinman on the timbres native to this NOJ tradition.

The evening’s concert was the first in a series of programs the Univeristy is doing for the Looking at Jazz Series. The concert was opened by the same combo from the day’s masterclass performing at USF Theatre II during the serving of light hors d’ouvres and cocktail tables decorated in a 1920′s theme.

During this time and throughout the concert, videos of early jazz were being projected behind the band. After the combo went on, Ben provided commentary on some of the videos he had brought from his personal collection. These were extraordinary videos about Preservation Hall and Jazz Funerals.

The main event featured the faculty jazz combo with the exception of drummer Steve Davis, whose spot was covered by USF alumnus Ian Goodman. They covered Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?” and other classic New Orleans tunes. The highlight for me was Jaffe and Wilkin’s statement on Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm, a recreation of the famous Don Byas|Slam Stewart Town Hall recording.

I found this MNJ concert and Ben Jaffe to be extremely inspiring and have decided to devote a portion of my study/practice to understanding more traditional forms of bass playing. To that end, I will be using the school Juzek (strung with all guts) and have ordered How Low Can You Go?, a three-disc collection chronicling the double bass in early music.

Most anyone who reads this and cares about classical music has probably already heard about this recent article in Cleveland’s weekly alt-newspaper, Scene.

It addresses the lack of audition screens at Cleveland Orchestra auditions and the influence of concertmaster William Preucil on the orchestra. I won’t comment, because I have no firsthand knowledge of any of the issues at hand, but those currently on the audition circuit may find this enlightening (or at least in agreement with what they have heard through the grapevine).