Jazz Studies
Jazz Studies Coordinator: Terell Stafford
Degree Programs:
B.M. Jazz Instrumental Performance
With an emphasis on ensemble opportunities and improvisation, students are prepared to perform, tour and record. Students take four years of private lessons with a jazz instructor. In addition to the core music curriculum, jazz instrumental students take courses in aural skills, improvisation, arranging, business of music, acoustics, computers in musical applications and conducting.
B.M. Jazz Vocal Performance
Vocal Performance students have numerous opportunities to build their skills as lyricists in tandem with performing with instrumental ensembles. In addition to weekly private lessons and the core music curriculum, vocal performance students take courses in jazz aural skills, improvisation, arranging, business of music, acoustics, computers in musical applications and conducting.
B.M. Jazz Composition/Arranging
With an emphasis on improvisation, the Jazz Arranging/Composition track prepares students to enter the field fully equipped with the marketable tools to pursue successful careers. In addition to courses in the performance concentration and the core music View Curriculum and Information, students take courses in jazz and pop history, jazz secondary piano, arranging, improvisation, composition, jazz styles and analysis and conducting.
The Department of Jazz Studies offers students myriad opportunities to hone their craft and prepare for careers as professional musicians, educators, composers and arrangers. Boyer Jazz alumni perform with eminent musicians, composing film scores, recording with major labels and teaching jazz to students around the country. Boyer also hosts a jazz student exchange program with the prestigious Conservatorium van Amsterdam (Amsterdam Conservatory).
Performance Venues and Guest Artists
Recent performances by the Temple University Jazz Band (TUJB) include Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola at Lincoln Center, the Apollo Theater, the Detroit Jazz Festival, the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, the Hague Jazz Festival in Amsterdam, an 80th Birthday Hometown Celebration for Philadelphia-native Jimmy Heath, and tributes to Slide Hampton, Clark Terry and Joe Wilder. The Band has performed at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts with the Terell Stafford Quartet and Carla Cook in a tribute to Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Vaughan, the Mellon/PSFS Jazz Festival, International Association of Jazz Educators Conferences, the East Coast Jazz Festival, the Midwest Clinic-International Band and Orchestra Conferences and on WRTI, Temple University Public Radio. The TUJB is also a frequent award winner at the annual Villanova Jazz Festival. The Jazz Studies Department also hosts Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington high school jazz competition each year. In March 2003, the TUJB completed a tour of Germany which included five performances with the Phoenix Foundation Jazz Band.
Among the many respected jazz artists who have played with the TUJB on stage in master classes and clinics include:
| Wynton Marsalis The Vanguard Orchestra Slide Hampton Dizzy Gillespie Dr. Billy Taylor Max Roach Frank Wess Phil Woods Jon Faddis Mel Lewis Dick Oatts Byron Stripling Conrad Herwig Claudio Roditi Antonio Hart |
Carl Allen JoAnne Brackeen Regina Carter Cyrus Chestnut Joey DeFrancesco McCoy Tyner Norman Simmons Benny Golson Savion Glover Joshua Redman Huston Person Nicolas Payton John Clayton Wycliffe Gordon Freddy Cole |
Recordings include: To Thad, with Love (2010), Room 323 (2005), Mean What You Say (2003). A jazz combo from the department was featured on the 2010 release, fourth stream…La Banda, on BCM&D Records (iTunes and CD Baby), which was nominated for a 2010 Grammy Award in “Best Instrumental Composition” category.
