Survey of Jazz History

Between 1994 and 2002, jazz was the primary type of music I listened to. I was that annoying kid that had 90.1 FM blaring in the car until they ran out of money and stopped playing jazz before 11 PM. I own at least twelve CDs by the Stan Kenton Orchestra, and stayed home learning the chord changes to Eager Beaver while all of the other high school senior boys were searching for eager beavers of their own.

I lost some of my interest in college, after multiple semesters of failed jazz band auditions while watching some obliviously horrible trumpeters make the cut -- apparently Chip McNeill was not a fan of my mellow tones. He did, however, teach me one important lesson: always take courses taught by the jazz faculty, because they're never in town to have class. Numerous jazz arranging classes and studio labs became easy As on the transcript, and all I had to do was show up to find the cancellation note on the door (jazz musicians don't dig email).

This lesson stuck with me in grad school when, for some peculiar reason, I had to fulfill a Masters requirement with a survey level music appreciation class. I ended up in Jazz History II, a lecture course full of uninterested freshman that only met about 50% of the time because Leon Anderson was always touring.

Our final assignment was to listen to a CD of an improvised jazz solo and transcribe it to the best of our abilities. Curious to see if I could still follow the changes, I picked the fastest solo I had in my CD collection, Wynton Marsalis playing Well You Needn't with Herbie Hancock:

• Listen (0:30 MP3)
  

I will always treasure the comments I received on my assignment:

When I resume my trumpeting career, and open at the Montreal Jazz Festival, the copy on my poster will read: "Internationally acclaimed trumpeter, Brian Uri!: It's like he knows what he's doing and he's pulling it off."