Jazz band to tour Europe in July
By Emily Baker
Staff Reporter

The TCU Jazz Ensemble will perform this July in the footsteps of such greats as Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Al Jarreau and B.B. King.

The group was selected to play at the 28th Annual North Sea Jazz Festival in The Hague, Netherlands, where a who’s-who of jazz musicians have performed, jazz band director Curt Wilson said.

A group of 24 TCU musicians and 11 of their guests will travel around Europe July 9-20 to play, Wilson said. Along with the North Sea Jazz Festival, they have been scheduled to appear at jazz festivals in Copenhagen, Denmark and Pori, Finland. Another stop to play

in Sweden is tentatively scheduled, Wilson said.
Wilson said what makes this trip so special is the fact that Europeans are generally knowledgeable about jazz and quite picky about good music.

“The students get to play in an electrifying venue, which is something you can’t teach them in a classroom,” Wilson said. “This will be something like they have never experienced before. They know they are good if they are well-received by a discerning European audience.”

Baritone saxophone player Justin Lucero said the chance to play for a knowledgeable audience is refreshing rather than intimidating. Lucero, a senior marketing and e-business major, said it is an opportunity to play more complex and challenging music a less-knowledgeable person might find unattractive.

“When we try to draw a large audience for concerts at TCU, we try to play simpler tunes people will recognize,” Lucero said. “If we play something more complex, people might think it sounds wrong when it is really an intelligently written piece of music.”

Much of the genius in jazz music comes from a player’s improvisational skills, Lucero said. Playing for a European audience means the unique parts have to meld perfectly or the group won’t be well-received, he said.

“During rehearsal, Mr. Wilson will point at you, and you have three or four seconds to come up with your improvisation,” Lucero said. “It gets us ready for the show.”

The group practices together three times a week, Lucero said. They practice the least out of all campus music groups because they recruit experienced and talented players, Lucero said.

Wilson said the performance at the North Sea Jazz Festival will help his recruiting efforts because it will bring exposure to the program at TCU. About 100,000 people visit the festival each year with an average of 10,000 visitors for each performance, Wilson said.

The group had to raise two-thirds of the cost of the trip and pay the other one-third out-of-pocket, Wilson said. The price tag is $2,650 a student, he said. Two on-campus concerts have brought in some revenue, Wilson said. The ensemble played in Paris, Texas, as part of a community concert series and fund raiser April 15, he said. The group is also relying on donations from TCU jazz alumni and profits from the sale of a CD recorded by the TCU Jazz Ensemble, Wilson said.

The CD, called “Classic Mix,” is available for $15 in the TCU Band Office in Ed Landreth Hall, Room 312. For questions about the CD, call (817) 257-7640.

e.k.baker@tcu.edu