Youth Has Its Day

The SFJAZZ All-Star High School Ensemble Auditions

This article originally appeared on the SFJazz website.

From behind a closed door, a clamorous three-saxophone rendition of "Round Midnight," underscored by a chaos of long tones, scales and fractured noodlings from trumpets, trombones, saxes and basses, leaks into the hallway of the Executive Conference Center of the Pan Pacific San Francisco Hotel. This facility, normally the staging ground for high-powered business meetings and multi-million dollar deals, has been overrun by teenage jazz musicians on this Saturday. The occasion is the Free Open Auditions for the 2002-2003 edition of the SFJAZZ All-Star High School Ensemble, held on September 14. The spirited cacophony is radiating from the warm-up room, where, early in the morning, the first round of hopefuls is limbering up.

The SFJAZZ all-star big band is entering its second full year this fall. The band, which gathers the best high school jazz musicians from around the Bay Area, was hugely successful during its first season. A series of rousing performances on the patio in front of the Masonic Auditorium before SFJAZZ concerts through the fall and spring were a hit with concert goers. Especially impressive was the band's selection to travel to New York City to take part in Jazz at Lincoln Center's Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition, an extraordinary distinction for a first-year organization.

But perhaps the most important accomplishment of the band and its director, Dr. Dee Spencer, has been the success of the ensemble as a venue for the area's best young jazz musicians to play together, challenge each other creatively and learn, from each other as well as from Spencer. Band members also receive instruction from high-profile guest instructors who stop in to lend a hand, including, during the first year, Branford Marsalis, Russell Gunn and Stefon Harris. On the schedule for this year are Toshiko Akiyoshi and Victor Goines.

As the day of auditions begins, the facility's front lobby, plus a side room, fill up with more arriving musicians and their parents. Joshua Price Kol, director of education for SFJAZZ and staff assistant Joe Salerno are directing traffic, working to get everyone registered and signed onto the schedule.

In the meantime, Spencer prepares her team of adjudicators for the day-long marathon of auditions. The panel of judges are veteran Bay Area musicians and educators, a group that would front a pretty exciting all-star band themselves. On hand to help Spencer are trumpeters Khalil Shaheed and John Worley, and saxophonists Andrew Speight and Josh Renick.

"I'm so excited," Spencer says. "We're going to have a great band. I see so many great players out there. They all came out."

Many of these musicians are already known to one or more of the judges from their own classrooms or through participation in the Stanford Jazz workshops, with which all of the adjudicators are associated. During the day a total of sixty-two young musicians will take a stab at making the band, coming from as far away as Santa Cruz, Pleasanton, Cupertino and Novato.

The auditions are open to anyone who wants to try out, known or not. Some of the students come from strong high school jazz programs and see the SFJAZZ ensemble as a chance to push themselves even harder. Others come from schools that don't offer much in the way of jazz instruction, and see the group as a great opportunity to get the training they need. The All-Star Ensemble members rehearse together once a week, and always remain in their high school bands, as well.

"Certain schools have traditions," Spencer explains. "Berkeley High has a tradition, and San Rafael has a tradition for outstanding jazz ensembles. Other places might happen to have amazing players. A school might have a program that's in its early stages, but there might be this one gem who manages to make it into our band. That person can say to me, 'I live for this experience, because my high school band is just beginning and I'm the best player in my whole school.' So it varies."

The judges won't work together as a panel, but instead will break up into separate rooms to each handle their own workload. Graduation has left Spencer with some holes to fill. As the auditions are about to begin, she reminds the judges to be on the lookout for trombone players. In addition, while all musicians returning from last year get to remain in the ensemble, their positions are not fully secure. The director takes quite seriously the ensemble's burgeoning reputation for excellent musicianship and it's roll as a flagship for the SFJAZZ Education Department, and because Spencer only gets the musicians for once-a-week rehearsals, she needs players who can hit the ground running.

"The people in the band now get to remain in the band," Spencer explains, "but there's no guarantee that they'll get to keep their lead chairs if somebody better shows up. We keep the returning musicians, but we're always looking for exceptional players."

The instructions on the flyer announcing the auditions are deceptively simple:

Walk-in only. No appointments. Arrive early.

Audition Requirements: Prepare two selections with improvisation.

1. Jazz standard (Autumn Leaves, Lady Bird, etc.)
2. 12-bar blues in any key

The students are asked to play, unaccompanied, a section of one or both of the songs they've chosen. In addition, each student is shown a chart, given about 30 seconds to look it over, and then asked to sight read from the top. And what isn't expressed in those brief instructions is the degree of dedication and hard work encompassed in the word "prepare," and the depth of talent, musicality and maturity that the judges are searching for.

A tall, young saxophonist walks slowly into Andrew Speight's brightly lit conference room turned audition space. The student may not know it, but Speight an extremely accomplished alto saxophonist and recording artist whose credentials as an educator include his current position in San Francisco State University's Music Department and three years at Michigan State University.

The student has prepared "Oleo," but Speight only wants to hear one chorus and counts out a time for the student to follow, as if wanting to get the him out of the comfort zone of whatever tempo he is used to. As the saxophonist plays, Speight listens for more than just for the musician's technical prowess.

"People like to call it the 'heart and soul' of the music," he explains later, when asked what he's trying to hear. "We're really talking about the foundational elements of musicianship, like understanding what phrasing is, understanding how to play melodies, understanding harmony. When you hear musicians who have that understanding, you can tell right away. Those people are not caught up in demonstrating some technical thing. They instantly cut to the heart of the music."

Next, Speight hands the student the chart for Miles Davis' "Compulsion" for the sight reading exercise. The young player gets a few seconds to scan, blowing silently into his reed and fingering the notes. Speight snaps off the time and the student jumps and starts to play. After a few bars he misses a marking and stops, apologizing.

"No, no," Speight says, snapping the time again, "keep going. One, two . . . "

"Whenever someone gives you a piece of music to scan," Speight tells the musician afterwards, "make sure you look for those returns. That's the only thing that tripped you up."

Almost every audition includes a short instruction or piece of advice. One tenor saxophonist has prepared "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," but tells Speight that she has never listened closely to the Cannonball Adderley recording. Speight reminds her as she's leaving that listening is one of the most important components of learning the music.

Speight suggests to another student, who is close but needs work on sight reading, "Grab a bunch of charts and practice. Just pull a chart out at random and scan it. Put the metronome on and let it push you along. You've got to practice with music that you haven't become attached to."

Out in the hallway, Brady Cohan, a guitarist from Los Altos, is talking about his experience in the audition room. Cohan, who also plays with the Monterey All-Star Band and studies with Bruce Foreman, is feeling OK about his chances.

"This audition is different from others I've been part of because there is no rhythm section here. You have to audition solo. But It was good. I was ready," he says. "I played 'Polka Dots and Moonbeams' and 'Billie's Bounce.' I think it went well."

Asked why it was important to him to try out for the SFJAZZ Ensemble when he's already a member of one all-star band, Cohan replies, "I met some cats from San Rafael in the Monterey band who were in this band last year, and they said it was killer. And the director, Dee Spencer, is great. I remember her from the Stanford Jazz Workshop."

Trumpeter Will Magid, of Gunn High School in Palo Alto, who was an alternate in the SFJAZZ Ensemble last year, is hoping to make the starting lineup this time around.

"It makes me play better when I play with the best players in the area," he says. " It's good to have them share their input. They rub off on you if you play with them enough."

Asked how he thinks things went, Magid says, "I was kind of surprised. I had two songs picked out, and after the first one they said, 'Oh, you don't need to play your other one.' When I was doing my sight reading, after just a few bars they said, 'OK, that's enough.' I don't know if that's a good sign, but I think I did OK."

A few days later both Cohan and Magid will be told that they have made the band as front line players.

In the room next to Speight's, John Worley and Khalil Shaheed, both, well-known trumpeters and experienced educators, are auditioning students together and are feeling encouraged. Worley is on the faculty at SF State and conducts clinics in his role as an endorsing artist for United Musical Instruments. Shaheed is an extremely active teacher who, among his many duties, is the founder of the Oaktown Jazz Workshop and heads the music department at Cole School for Performing Arts in West Oakland.

They audition in short order a trombonist and a bass player who impress them greatly. Next comes a sax player who they see as a possibility for the lead alto chair. In their conversation with this musician, still another criteria for selection comes to light, adaptability of tone and style.

"If you're going to play lead alto," Worley tells the young player, "you don't always want to have that edgy bright sound. The section will be looking to you for leadership. You'll need to be able to change up your tone."

Spencer, who has slipped into the room expressly to hear this saxophonist, concurs after the musician has left. "If they have too much of a bite to their tone, they'll stand out in the section."

Joey Schneider, a fourteen-year-old trumpeter from Novato High School turns the heads of Worley and Shaheed. The young man's improvisation skills and intonation are strong, his tone clear and his sight reading assured. Worley asks Schneider if he can play as if he were in Louis Armstrong's era, and the student, while not attempting a Satchmo imitation, alters his playing enough to satisfy the teacher. Spencer walks in briefly to listen to Schneider and goes out minutes later grinning and shaking her head.

"Some of the kids here are playing in a manner that's mature way beyond their years," Worley says after Schneider is gone. "Those are people that you look for who can make a difference. So far what we've heard has indicated a vast pool of extremely talented kids, but within that pool, there are always one or two who are the real deal."

Shaheed, who has been filling out Schneider's evaluation form, is now laughing. "That's what I'm writing down," he says. "Mature way beyond years. The real deal."

Schneider, too, will make the ensemble.

Perhaps the oddest scene for a non-musician takes place in the large meeting room at the back of the conference complex, where Spencer is auditioning a drummer, a mop-topped young man with an unchanging smile that is either delighted or nervous.

"Play a bossa for me," Spencer says, and the drummer swings into the beat, looking softly into the middle distance.

"Now give me a jazz waltz, Elvin style," Spencer requests, and the fellow complies without hesitation. What's odd to an outsider is the sight of this drummer, not playing a solo, but only the basic rhythm of a waltz, trying for the accents of timing that might create an "Elvin style," all the while with his head cocked slightly to the side and his eyes focused elsewhere, as if he is listening closely to the imaginary band he's backing.

"I think the auditions went really well and a lot smoother than I anticipated," Khalil Shaheed reflects, several days after the auditions. "The level of musicianship was extremely high. There were a lot of surprises and a lot of maturity in young musicians that I didn't think I'd see."

Shaheed believes that the success of the SFJAZZ All-Star High School Ensemble is one more sign of what he sees as a resurgence in the interest in jazz among young people.

"I formed Oaktown nine years ago," he says, "and just in that period there's been a reawakening. I've seen more and more young people really buckle down and get serious, and they've formed a network in the area. A lot of the musicians who were at the auditions know each other from different musical settings, from Dee's band, from my workshops or from the Stanford workshops where we all teach. So they're forming a network now that will serve them for the rest of their lives. We're also re-establishing a rich legacy for this area."

With the stress of the day behind her, Spencer, too, is happy. "We found a lot of really good players," she says. "The turnout was more than we'd ever had in the past and the level of musicianship just keeps growing and growing. I was so glad people showed up. When you have a walk-in audition, you never know what's going to happen, so I'd been nervous for a couple of days prior."

A total of eighteen new musicians, plus six new alternates, have made the band. This includes two guitarists, which is two more than the ensemble had last year. With all that new talent, plus a solid foundation of returning players, this year's edition of the SFJAZZ All-Star High School Ensemble will be interesting indeed. They have a lot to live up to.

"The first rehearsal is the tell-tale rehearsal," Spencer says. "I have to figure out what kind of band I'm going to have, and I won't know until we've played together for an hour. Having guitarists this year gives us an opportunity to do a wider variety of material. Plus, the guitar players are very good soloists. That frees us up to really expand the rhythm section, which is exciting."

They also have their work cut out for them right now. Their first public performance, the opening concert of the 20th Anniversary San Francisco Jazz Festival at Justin Herman Plaza, will take place on October 23, just a few weeks away. That should be quite a show.

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