Jazz Trumpeter and Educator Sean Jones to Perform at Schaeffer Auditorium April 15

Jazz Trumpeter and Educator Sean Jones to Perform at Schaeffer Auditorium April 15

By Susan L. Peña

KUTZTOWN, Pa. - KU Presents! will conclude this season's Performing Artists Series with a concert by Sean Jones, the renowned jazz trumpeter, educator, composer and bandleader, and his quartet 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 15, Schaeffer Auditorium at Kutztown University. To celebrate KU's excellent jazz program, Jones and his ensemble will collaborate with KU's Downbeat Award-winning Jazz Ensemble I for part of the performance.

In a quiet moment carved out of his busy life, Jones sat in his book-lined office and riffed on a wide range of topics, from music to spirituality and philosophy and literature and the joy of teaching, always returning to his long love affair with the trumpet.

"I fell in love with the trumpet because it was difficult and it was an escape," he said. "I was a weird nerd who spent a lot of time by myself and didn't feel I fit in."

It wasn't easy to find solitary time in a house full of 13 people - his grandmother, mother, siblings, aunt and cousins all living together after his father left. They struggled with finances, mental health issues and other woes in the small town of Warren, Ohio, but Jones found joy in singing and playing drums in their church.

As he started learning trumpet in the fifth-grade school music program, "the teachers noticed that I showed up early to rehearsals," he said. "I would come at the crack of dawn, as the janitor was getting there, before anyone else, because there was only one black Manhasset music stand, and I wanted it. The others were cheap wire ones (a great place to put your sheet music is a big help when learning a difficult instrument)."

He credited Jessica Turner, a clarinetist and music teacher at the school, with taking an interest in him and setting him on a new path. When she discovered he had already gone through the trumpet book on his own, she took him for pizza and passed him two CDs by Miles Davis: "Kind of Blue" and "Tutu."

What he heard inspired him to practice for hours each day and soon his band teachers were contacting music professors at nearby Youngstown State University to give him private lessons. By his mid-teens, he had formed a small horn band, The Sounds of Victory, that toured local churches.

"I got the spirituality and connectivity from church and the deep intellectual stimulation from my professors," Jones said. "That was the beauty of growing up in Northeast Ohio at that time."

He also revealed his love of literature, cultivated by his high school English teacher, Suzanne Fowley, who assigned each student to write a letter to their parents to tell them where they expected to be in 10 years. "I told them (1) I would be a college professor and play music, (2) I'd have my own albums out, and (3) I'd be Wynton Marsalis's friend."

All three of the goals turned into reality over the next 10 years, despite his struggling through "a ton of failures," he confessed. "I was determined to make it happen."

Jones earned his undergraduate degree from Youngstown and paid his dues sitting in with Vaughn Wiester's Jazz Orchestra, as well as performing in Cincinnati, Detroit and Pittsburgh. He went on to get a master's degree from Rutgers University, where he studied with William Fielder, who had taught Marsalis.

When he was offered a six-month stint with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra in 2004, Marsalis, who was the artistic director, offered him a permanent position that he kept until 2010, and thus began their friendly relationship. "Wynton is a complicated man," Jones said. "He is one of the most giving human beings I've ever met. . . He came into prominence in the early 1980s, when there was a return to fundamentalism and a leaning into the material world. His return to 'real' jazz was the answer to the fusion in the 1970s. I got into education so I could encourage young people to go back into experimentation. But Wynton has changed over the years."

Jones's dedication to passing the torch to younger musicians continues the long tradition of older jazz musicians taking youngsters under their wings and letting them sit in on gigs to learn the ropes. "I knew music was a vehicle to carry a larger message of human enlightenment," he said. "My full mission in life is to share with younger people and show them there is a better way. You can be your complete self without wearing a mask."

Jones currently holds the Richard and Elizabeth Case Chair in Jazz Studies at Johns Hopkins University's Peabody Institute in Baltimore, Md. He was previously chair of the brass department at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Mass. He is immediate past president of the Jazz Education Network and he serves as artistic director of NYO Jazz, one of Carnegie Hall's three youth ensembles.

"It's important for 40-year-olds to empower 30-year-olds, and 30-year-olds to empower 20-year-olds, and 20-year-olds to empower 10-year-olds. We need to empower younger people and be there to catch them when they fall. Remember, the U.S. Constitution was written by the Founding Fathers when they were young, when they weren't weighed down by the material world."

Jones said he has begun recently to work on a project with Dr. J. B. Dyas, vice president of education and curriculum development at the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz at UCLA, to create a course on the group improvisation process in jazz and how it relates to civics. They are working closely with the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center for Government Excellence, which will be using this course in its graduate program for future civic and political leaders.

"Jazz is the sonic representation of democracy," he said, "because it allows the individual freedom, but with respect and responsibility to the group. I feel that jazz could only develop in the United States because it's so deeply involved in the democratic process. I truly believe this music can save this country."

In addition to his own career as a performing and recording artist, Jones has worked with many major jazz artists, including Dianne Reeves, Nancy Wilson, Jimmy Heath and Illinois Jacquet. He joined Marcus Miller, Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock for the 2011 Tribute to Miles Tour and has also performed with symphony orchestras and other ensembles. He has recorded eight albums as a leader for Mack Avenue Records, the latest of which is "Live From Jazz at the Bistro."

For his April 15 concert, Jones will bring three of his former students: drummer Colby Royston, bassist Aidan Taylor and pianist Seth Finch, who will play some Jones originals from his upcoming album, "Return: The Prodigal Son," and some of their own pieces as well. All three are now professional musicians.

Tickets for Sean Jones are $35 for adults, $34 for seniors and $19 for KU students. Tickets can be purchased at https://www.KutztownPresents.org or by calling the KU Presents! Box Office 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday, at 610-683-4092. Established to be the center of cultural life at Kutztown University, KU Presents! serves the campus and community by bringing world-class live arts that entertain, educate and enrich. We are proud to partner with Boscov's Berks Jazz Fest for this event as part of the BJF35/JAM Celebration.