Jazz banned - Thirty-year anniversary of KU Jazz Festival reunites alumni

[Lois Gilbert]

Jazz banned
Thirty-year anniversary of KU Jazz Festival reunites alumni once forbidden from performing the style

Lawrence has earned a reputation as a haven for underground music.

That same attribute hasn’t always applied to Kansas University, however.

Prior to 1972, jazz was all but forbidden within the music department. Students from the era recall former fine arts dean Thomas Gorton threatening those he heard playing jazz in the practice rooms to stop or he’d yank their scholarships.

“I was there in the dark years,” says Earle Dumler, a renowned double reed player who attended KU from ’62 to ’67. “The dean wouldn’t even allow us in Murphy (Hall), even though we had a faculty sponsor. We had to rehearse at Bailey (Hall) when the music education department was there.”

Dumler was actually training at KU to become a classical oboist, and he took a job with a symphony upon graduating. But the Russell native had already been bitten by the jazz bug.

“I had gone to a Stan Kenton clinic,” he says of the prominent jazz bandleader. “(Kenton) called me out of the blue to play baritone and bass saxophone. I jumped ship on the symphony, went out on the road for peanuts, and I ended up in Los Angeles for good.”

Dumler — now a four-time Grammy winner — is one of 50 or so alumni who are returning to perform at the Lied Center as part of the 30th annual KU Jazz Festival.

The festival, which features educational opportunities for students and live concerts for the general public, also coincides with the 35th anniversary of the KU Jazz Studies Program.

“It’s been a challenge to track down a lot of these people who played in the program the last 20 or 30 years,” says Dan Gailey, KU jazz director. “It’s been fun finding out what’s been going on in their careers. A lot of them are musically doing great things that we had no clue about.”

Gailey decided this year that the festival should only feature artists who were alumni. So many are returning, though, that he split the musicians into two bands over consecutive nights.

“We were able to put together really balanced big bands. I think there are maybe 16 saxophone players, 12 trumpets and 15 trombones — something like that,” he says.

Foster care

One saxophonist in that group is particularly noteworthy, according to Gailey.

Gary Foster, who came to KU in 1956, stands as the reigning “most famous alumni” to hail from the jazz department.

Equally versed at clarinet and flute, Foster recalls playing both the first jazz concert the university ever sponsored (at Swarthout Recital Hall in 1972) and the first KU Jazz Festival 30 years ago.

The musician says he got hooked on jazz at the age of 13 while trying to learn it by mimicking recordings spun in his Leavenworth living room.

“I was pretty sure by then that music was it for me,” Foster says.

He earned degrees in performance (with clarinet) and music education at KU, but indulging his love of jazz wasn’t so easy in those days.

“There was a lot of great jazz activity, but not with the blessings of the music department,” Foster remembers. “We certainly didn’t do any jazz concerts in the music complex. ... We played dance jobs and we had an old church that the local union owned out in the country. Several of us had keys. Sometimes we’d go out there at 11 p.m. and jam for two or three hours.”

Oscars gig

Foster left Lawrence for the Los Angeles area in 1961, and since then he has become one of the industry’s go-to session artists.

“I love to play jazz and do it every chance I get. But with most art music — which is what jazz is — unless you’re Wynton Marsalis or someone like that, you can’t count on making a full living at it,” he says.

In fact, last Sunday he was “paying the bills” by performing on one of the world’s biggest stages: as a pit orchestra member at the Academy Awards.

“It’s kind of interesting to watch the stars and what their various attitudes are and where their success leads them,” says Foster, who estimates he’s worked 25 Oscars ceremonies.

He did use this year’s show as an opportunity to meet fellow Leavenworth musician Melissa Etheridge, who performed her eventual Oscar-winning song “I Need to Wake Up.”

“She was coming out of the door where we enter the orchestra pit. I said, ‘Hello, I’m class of ’54 for Leavenworth High School.’ It was a nice moment. It was about 10 minutes of jabbering about Leavenworth and all of our friends there,” Foster says.

So does his upcoming homecoming concert in Lawrence seem small by comparison to the glamorous Hollywood scene?

“No. I think playing jazz at KU is the payoff,” he says. “Many of us who love to play jazz, we find ways to support our habit.”

Back at the podium

It’s not only former students who will be returning for the 30th anniversary gathering. Former KU jazz directors Robert Foster, James Barnes and Ronald McCurdy will all take turns leading the KU Jazz Alumni Big Band on Saturday.

“Bob Foster (no relation to Gary) was the one who got it started,” says Gailey, who has headed the program since 1990.

Director Foster’s perseverance coupled with the arrival of a new departmental dean in 1975 helped pave the way for live jazz at the university.

Gailey says, “When we’re celebrating the anniversary, we’re literally celebrating when it stopped being a bastard form at KU. We got started late, but it’s been one of the most successful things we’ve done up here.”

Jazz Festival events open to the general

Friday, March 2, 2006, 7:30 p.m. Lied Center of Kansas:

• KU music alumni Gary Foster, Jon Lewis and Earle Dumler perform with the KU Jazz Ensemble I

• KU Jazz Festival Adjudicator All-Star Big Band performs

• KU Jazz Combo I and KU Jazz Singers perform

Saturday, March 3, 2006, 7:30 p.m., Lied Center of Kansas:

• KU Jazz Alumni Big Band performs, directed by: Robert Foster, KU professor of music, assistant chair of the Department of Music and Dance and former KU jazz director; James Barnes, KU professor of music theory and composition and former KU jazz director; Ronald McCurdy, former KU jazz director and current jazz studies director at USC; and Dan Gailey. Guest alumni soloists for this concert include Gary Foster, Jon Lewis and Earle Dumler.

[Dennis Gonzalez]

Congratulations to KU on its 30th anniversary jazz fest. I sympathize with musicians when certain musics are banned from certain campuses. The University of North Texas' jazz director Leon Breeden (UNT is, of course, famous internationally for its jazz program and its One O'Clock Lab Band and its many famous alumni) threatened his One O'Clock players with expulsion after he caught wind of the fact that the One O'Clock players themselves had asked me to work with them independently, on their own time, on New Jazz and Improv Techniques - as opposed to his system of teaching traditional and studio jazz techniques - which I taught free of charge every Monday night.

One by one they quit coming, until one brave soul told me that Dr. Breeden didn't want his young players tainted by this "Un-Music". The various times Dr. Breeden and I crossed paths, he turned his back and walked away, refusing to shake my hand.

When Old and New Dreams (Dewey Redman, Don Cherry, Ed Blackwell, and Charlie Haden) contacted me about playing a concert in North Texas, I immediately contacted the music department at UNT, and they readily agreed to provide the venue if I would take care of everything else. The day before the quartet was set to fly in, I received an anonymous call from the department stating simply that "someone" within the jazz department had objected to Old and New Dreams coming on campus to play a concert given their "propensity toward drug use - especially the use of heroin - and their habit of trashing concert halls and hotel rooms." The message continued that they could not be responsible for the actions of the 4 men (by this time legends in the field of jazz) and so the concert was cancelled. My calls to the music department were never returned.

So, congratulations on the perseverance of KU students, on this 30th anniversary! May you all forever kick ass!