All That Jazz It may come as a surprise that the beginnings of Calhoun’s jazz program can be traced back to what many consider the lowest form of music: the type that’s played in elevators. Well, sort of. The program literally got its start in the 81st Street elevators, as an unofficial class taught by Victor Lin with one “enrolled” student. That student, Dan Stein ’07, began playing the upright bass as an eighth grader in 2002, when Calhoun added a strings program. Dan started studying the bass in the context of classical music, but he also absorbed a lot more that Victor had to offer. “As I got a little better and more excited, Victor just started teaching me all kinds of music—pop, funk and jazz—and we’d ride up and down the elevator, playing for whoever would listen whenever the door opened. That was the beginning of the jazz program.” Today, Calhoun’s Upper School jazz program—headed by Victor—boasts more than 30 students performing in seven ensembles, coached by an extended adjunct faculty composed of some of the most promising jazz artists in America. It’s even trickled down to the Middle School, where a jazz program began this year in the eighth grade under the leadership Kevin Farrell. The success of the program has been astounding in terms of both student enthusiasm and the talent that has emerged. In the la ast two years, Victor has taken his more advanced jazz students in the “730 for the time they practice Band”—named ” each morning—to the prestigious Berklee Colleg ge High School Jazz Festival in Boston, where e they’ve placed in the upper echelon of winne ers from mostly top conservatories. Jack Gulielmetti ’14, who has performed J in both competitions and last year earned Most Accomplished Player at the e festival, says, “The biggest difference between us and the groups from other schools is that some of those kids are literallly majoring in music in high school. We don’t have a major here, but if it’s something
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(L-R) Victor Lin, head of Calhoun’s jazz program, and adjunct music teacher Dan Stein ‘07 re-create the “elevator music” that started it all in 2003.
you take seriously enough, you can take advantage of the resources we have.” Steve Nelson believes that students have gravitated toward the program because, at its core, “jazz is sort of cool,” observing that most of, if not all, popular music has its roots in jazz—and thus students are intuitively attracted to the form. “It’s pretty easy to take kids from the milieu of popular music that they have on their iPods and other devices and draw them from that into jazz, which I think is much more complex, richer and interesting intellectually,” says Steve. When it comes to explaining his approach to teaching, Victor says there is “no recipe,” but the key is individual attention for each student. “It’s not even about what they achieve,” he notes. “It’s about cultivating relationships and piquing their curiosity.” Still, he believes that the jazz program would not be where it is today without his “remarkable” original student. “I remember saying to Dan, ‘If we’re going to show that this can work, you’re going to be the big example.’ I literally threw everything I knew into him, and told him that by the time
he graduated I wanted to be gigging with him, and that when he graduated college I’d be hiring him professionally for my trio.” All of that came true. Dan went on to the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he graduated with honors, and is now completing his master’s degree in jazz studies at Juilliard. He’s also back at Calhoun, teaching the subject he loves. “It’s incredible for me to see how the jazz program has developed,” he says. “The year after I graduated was the first year of actual jazz classes, and that was kind of a bittersweet thing for me, because I would have loved to have had those classes while I was here. But I was still happy that Calhoun was embracing this art form that I knew other students would be really excited about. And now the fact that it’s such a big program with enormous excitement around it? It’s astounding. It makes me so happy, and I’m so glad that I can come back and be a part of it.” See video interviews with Steve Nelson, Dan Stein ’07, Jack Gulielmetti ’14 and other musicians at www.calhoun.org/music.