PROVO, Utah (April 3, 2014)—It’s not every day that you walk into a lecture hall and are welcomed by the sweet sound of jazz music, especially when the lecture is sponsored by the Brigham Young University College of Humanities. But at the 2014 Civic Jazz event, jazz legends Loren Schoenberg and Marcus Roberts along with BYU professor Greg Clark explained how jazz music intersects with the humanities and exemplifies the fine art of getting along.
Schoenberg, artistic director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and saxophone player, and Roberts, world renowned jazz pianist and composer, started the event with a spectacular jazz improvised duet.
Greg Clark, an associate dean in the college and an English professor, moderated the event. He explained that as a child, he started listening to jazz music because it was on the radio. Years later, living in Provo, he and his wife attended a jazz band event in the Marriott Center. Clark explained that the performer “talked about how jazz operated democratically, and at that time, I was looking at democratic culture and contemplating the difficulties of that.”
After the performance, Clark got in touch with the jazz musician, who was interested in the questions Clark was asking.
“What can we learn about our lives from the way jazz works? Clark asked.
Jazz teaches many principles that apply to real life. For example, Clark said, Jazz teaches “equality without undermining authority, community – how to be assertive without damaging community, and how to live together better. Jazz has things to teach us about that.”
As Schoenberg and Roberts played together, those principles could be heard in their music – the way the instruments asserted their own sound and yet played together in communion.
Clark explained, “What happens to individualism in a jazz performance? If you don’t have individualism, it’s trouble. If you have too much individualism, it’s trouble.”
A member of the audience asked how the jazz musicians knew when to step back and when to take the stronger role.
Roberts explained, “Nothing great can come if everyone is stepping on everyone. I made room for him and he made room for me.”
Another large part of the cooperation within jazz music is keeping within the form.
Roberts said, “The bottom line is we want it to sound like jazz music. To sound like jazz music, it has to stay within the bounds of the known and unknown.”
Clark added, “Think about what you can take away from this. Loren Schoenberg said that when he sees jazz music performed well, it gives him hope that people can really get along.”
After playing another jazz duet with Roberts, Schoenberg explained, “When you see jazz, you are seeing two people getting along together. How many times in the course of the day do you really see people getting along? In any number of places, you see people not getting along well, which is why jazz is such a wonderful thing.”
Roberts and Schoenberg continued to play jazz music throughout the event.
Clark said, “I think there’s more to getting along than we normally think. It’s about making something hopeful and beautiful.”
As the jazz music continued, Clark asked the audience to think about how they feel. “That’s what this is all about. What have you learned?”
As the audience shared their thoughts about the performance, Roberts said, “The experiences that we have are how we develop our identity and perspective.” He said that as he’s been working with Clark over the past six months, he’s learned to apply these concepts himself.
The Civic Jazz performance showed how it’s possible for humans to collaborate and get along, and how such collaboration can make something better than individuals could ever make alone.
For more information on events sponsored by the College of Humanities, visit the Humanities College website.
—By Stephanie Bahr Bentley BA ’14