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32 nd Annual
Don’t Just
Call Them
Students
Grace Kelly’s resumé already
reads like a seasoned professional’s.
Just 16 years old, the
alto saxophonist and vocalist finished
high school in 2008 and has completed
her second semester at Berklee
College of Music in Boston. She has
released five CDs as a leader (including
one featuring alto sax hero Lee
Konitz), played at the Kennedy Center
with Wynton Marsalis, traveled around
the world with her own quintet and
appeared on NPR’s “Piano Jazz” with Marian
McPartland.
In addition to the Berklee curriculum,
Kelly has been studying with alto saxophonist
Greg Osby, with whom she’s working on
improvisational concepts. “He’s been giving
me barriers to work with and having me take a
solo without the roots, or with just a motive of
a rhythm or an interval,” she said. “I’ve also
been working with different numbers of note
groupings—playing with groups of fives or
sevens and coming up with rhythms to play
over the barline has been a challenge.”
Max Seiden plays tenor sax in the Jazz
Ensemble and Jazz Combo at Westlake High
School (Austin, Texas), where he gets numerous
opportunities to improvise. His experience
in the school’s wind ensemble, and his band
program’s insistence on learning to “listen
across an ensemble,” have also been instrumental
in developing his ear for jazz.
In his solos, Seiden focuses on finding
common melodic, harmonic, rhythmic or
dynamic ideas that exist within the music. “I’ll
try to fit myself into the group in a way that
isn’t always conventional but attracts the interests
of the other members, and causes them to
respond with their own adjustments,” he said.
“What ideally ends up occurring is a gradual
shifting that leads to an interesting new location.”
A graduating senior, Seiden will start
college as a music/engineering student this
fall; he has already been accepted by the
University of Michigan and Northwestern
University.
Luke Marantz, a senior at Booker T.
Washington HSPVA in Dallas, has won more
than a dozen DB awards since he was first
recognized for his fresh-sounding jazz vocal
chops. Now focusing on piano, Marantz plays
in the performing arts high school’s jazz
combo as well as the MIDI ensemble.
Max Seiden Dave Chisholm Matthew Sheens
Like Seiden, Marantz likes to think that
when he takes a solo, it’s a collective ensemble
effort. It’s a mind-set that he has picked up
from such influences as Keith Jarrett, Oscar
Peterson and Brad Mehldau, as well as
European pianist John Taylor. “Listening to
Taylor, it’s apparent that it’s never just one
person soloing,” Marantz said. “He has such a
giving and beautiful vibe. I would like to have
that kind of thing in my music.”
Marantz also plans to pursue his musical
education at the college level. He is currently
considering the New England Conservatory of
Music, the New School and the University of
Miami, among other institutions.
Ivan Rosenberg plays lead trumpet in the
senior jazz band and symphonic band at
LaGuardia (N.Y.) High School for the
Performing Arts, where he will graduate this
spring. But he gets most of his jazz blowing
done after school in the LaGuardia
Thelonious Monk Institute Sextet and on
weekends with the big band and top combo at
the Manhattan School of Music Pre-College.
“We work a lot on developing ideas, playing
changes, transcribing solos, everything
you need to become fluent in improvisation,”
Rosenberg said. “I always try to give my solos
a good arc from beginning to end. I’m very
interested in motivic development and interaction.
I’m always looking for new harmonic,
rhythmic and melodic approaches.”
Among his main trumpet influences,
Rosenberg lists Clifford Brown, Freddie
Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Nicholas Payton, Sean
Jones, Terence Blanchard and Terell Stafford.
Trumpeter Dave Chisholm, a graduate student
and teaching assistant at University of
Utah, performs in Jazz Ensemble I as well as
the original-music combo John Henry. His
focus has always centered on composition,
and his sense of improvisation has stemmed
Jazz Soloist Winners
from that.
“The best challenge is writing music that is
beyond my capabilities as an improviser, and
then forcing myself to improvise over it,” he
said. “I also try to practice some interesting
systematic techniques like Coltrane changes
and augmented scale exercises.”
After he finishes his master’s degree this
spring, Chisholm plans to pursue his doctorate
in music. “Great music can be made anywhere,
and I intend to write, perform, teach
and elevate my peers wherever I end up,” he
said. “In this digital age, especially, geography
doesn’t present much of a problem in pursuing
cutting-edge music.”
Pianist Matthew Sheens has completed his
honors in jazz performance degree at the
Elder Conservatorium, University of
Adelaide, Australia. He is the first student
from Down Under to win a DB—not surprising
since his teacher, American-born tenor
player Dustan Cox, won a handful of DBs
himself back in the 1990s.
Sheens has tried to diversify his influences
and his study so as not to become a replica of
another musician. He believes that transcribing
musicians not of your instrument can offer
fantastic insights into improvisation. In that
spirit, Sheens recently took a course studying
the music of guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel.
“Creating a solo based on a single idea is
the most difficult thing ever,” he said. “But
musicians such as Thelonious Monk, Brad
Mehldau and Jason Moran have a way of creating
beauty out of little thematic material. As
an improviser, it’s easy to think only about the
bar you are playing, as opposed to the solo as
a structurally sound whole.”
Sheens will come to the States this fall, as
he recently accepted an offer to pursue a master’s
in jazz performance at Boston’s New
England Conservatory. —Ed Enright
80 DOWNBEAT June 2009