I had a great time last week in Oklahoma at the Northeastern State University of Oklahoma. I was a guest of
the NSU Jazz Lab big band and its director of jazz studies,  Arthur White. I was not expecting to find such a great program for jazz there at all but this facility really has a lot going for it. For example-they have a WHOLE building dedicated to jazz. The building is constructed like a club; there's a stage, good sound system and table and chairs like a club but no liquor. They can record concerts there since they have a studio console upstairs along with an isolation booth and offices for Arthur and Shane Ohlson-who was the person who picked me up at the airport. Shane is a pianist and the Jazz Lab Facilities Supervisor. Arthur had his band cracking and we had a great time. I wish someone would send me some pictures if they have any from that event! Arthur arranged one of my tunes from VOODOO SUITE for the concert-it was the tune Rite of Scorpio. That's a first-and a really good arrangement too. Seeing this support from the audience for this type of quality program is good news. While there we were talking about how jazz has become almost an academic music. What I mean is that right now-jazz in college and in other educational forums has never been stronger. There's so much going on in school these days for jazz. When you get out of school, however-there seems to be a huge dropoff in terms of opportunity. There's never been so much jazz in the academic world and there's never been so little in the commercial world. Maybe that's too simplistic but I believe it's somewhat true. You have to have an education to really understand jazz at some level. I've always felt that taking the music out of the everyday collective experience isn't good for the music but maybe we are really now talking about a new form of classical music. It's an interesting time in that regard. There's so much incredible music and so many great players-it seems that the opportunity is a lot less.

That's enough shpiel from me today. In about a day and a half-I'm in the studio with Victor Little, Eric Levy and drummer Dennis Chambers. I'll have more after that-and more images.

By the way-here's a link to the NSU Jazz Lab band site. Check out the links and the history.

http://www.nsuok.edu/jazzlab/history.html