News On Campus
Jazz Festival Turns 50
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Each February for the past 50 years, jazz artists and enthusiasts alike have been flocking to Elmhurst’s Hammerschmidt Memorial Chapel for the Elmhurst College Jazz Festival, one of the nation’s oldest and most highly regarded musical gatherings. Over the years, the event has attracted not only the best college jazz bands, but also an honor roll of acclaimed professionals, including Dizzy Gillespie, Louie Bellson and Cannonball Adderley. This year’s festival, marking its golden anniversary, may have been the biggest and boldest yet. In addition to dozens of college and high school ensembles, the festival featured performances from special guests Dee Dee Bridgewater, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Rufus Reid and others. It was a fittingly powerful celebration of an event that has drawn high praise from both educators and artists. Miles Osland, director of the University of Kentucky band and a frequent guest at the festival, calls it “the best college jazz festival in the country.” “It was a very special weekend,” said the festival’s director, Doug Beach, who heads the jazz studies program at Elmhurst and leads the College’s acclaimed jazz band. “We had such outstanding talent—not just the 60-plus professionals, but also the many wonderful college groups. I’ve had so many people tell me that it was a great way to celebrate the festival’s anniversary.” Beach said the anniversary celebration had been two years in the planning, and he credited the student volunteers who staff the festival with making sure the event ran smoothly. “This year was even bigger than normal, with more musicians, more hotels, more details to tend to. And the students really nailed it,” Beach said. “I always say that I may be the director, but it’s the students who really make the thing go.” Student musicians are at the heart of the festival’s mission. Visiting college and high school bands get the chance to perform in front of celebrated professional artists who serve as the festival’s adjudicators and clinicians. The professionals provide the students with detailed critiques of their performances and offer clinics and master classes. Then the professionals close each night of the festival with performances of their own, usually to enthusiastic overflow audiences. This year’s festival included performances by ensembles from five Illinois high schools and 26 college bands, including groups from as far away as the Kunstuniversität Graz in Austria and California State University, Long Beach. The final concert of the 2017 festival featured the Bill Holman Big Band performing an original composition in honor of the festival’s 50th anniversary.