Long before Chicago, Montreal and San Francisco began staging jazz festivals that would attract audiences from around the world, a small college in the west suburbs showed how it’s done.
Through the decades, trumpet virtuosos Dizzy Gillespie and Maynard Ferguson, drum master Louie Bellson, vocal diva Dee Dee Bridgewater, alto saxophone innovator Lee Konitz and several other major figures have played the Elmhurst College Jazz Festival.
On Feb. 23, the event will kick off its 50th anniversary edition, once again showcasing performers rarely encountered in the Chicago area, among them the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Bill Holman Big Band and Patrick Williams Big Band.
In addition, Bridgewater will return to the festival, which, as always, will counterbalance nighttime performances with daytime sets spotlighting collegiate ensembles from across the country (all of it open to the public).
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So how did a college noted for its lovely, pastoral campus — with an enrollment of 3,400 — happen to become a force in presenting a decidedly urban music?
“We’re very fortunate,” says Doug Beach, who started leading the school’s jazz band in 1978 and expanded a festival that had begun a decade earlier.
“We work very hard with sponsors. I spend a lot of time on the development side of the table.
“This year, the 50th, being very special, my alumni from the band have really stepped up and contributed a lot of money to it. Lots of them wrote checks, and some wrote very large checks.
“They want to give back, because they remember their times here.”
Certainly jazz tradition runs deep at Elmhurst College, the school having produced such noted Chicago musicians as singer Typhanie Monique and guitarist Chris Siebold. Last October, trumpeter and former “Tonight Show” bandleader Doc Severinsen engaged Elmhurst College’s big band to tour with him.
“I got an email from his road manager asking if we’d come on the road and play some gigs in Ohio,” remembers Beach, who received Severinsen’s scores a few days later and took them into rehearsals.
“We were the Doc Severinsen Big Band. We played the ‘Tonight Show’ book,” adds Beach, referring to the repertoire Severinsen led on Johnny Carson’s classic, late-night TV program.
“We worked bales to learn them.”
The students also play the festival, which began in 1968 as a regional chapter of the American College Jazz Festival. When that event folded after the 1973 incarnation, it seemed as if a noble tradition had come to an end.
But to many observers’ surprise, Elmhurst College turned a potential loss into an opportunity, continuing the tradition on its campus and, eventually, building upon it. Beach and friends decided that if they could book major artists, audiences would grow. And if the turnout swelled, sponsors would line up to support the endeavor.
The approach worked, the festival gaining heft and stature with each year. From an educational standpoint, the event gave students the chance not only to hear the masters live but to interact with them during daytime events.
“It’s one of the great college jazz festivals in the United States,” DownBeat magazine publisher Frank Alkyer told me in 2013, when the event was a youthful 46.
“The lineup this year is incredible, but it’s always this way. You see these great musicians walking around the streets of Elmhurst,” added Alkyer, referencing the suburb where DownBeat also is based.
“This is a throwback to how (Dave) Brubeck made his name on college campuses. It reminds you of what Brubeck did. He gave rise to all these festivals.”
Indeed, in the 1950s Brubeck led his quartet in college campuses across the country, in effect planting the seeds of the emergence of jazz studies programs in institutions from which the music long had been banned. The Elmhurst College Jazz Festival stands as a distinguished part of Brubeck’s legacy.
All the more because although Beach directs the event, the students run it, managing transportation, logistics, ticket sales, stagecraft, you-name-it. Beach estimates that more than 100 students work on the festival, gratis, in the process learning something about music, performance, production and, of course, personal responsibility.
“We continually receive comments about how special the kids are,” says Beach.
“Our kids here, and all of us here, we feel that we can put on an event that can rival most. We’re not the North Sea Jazz Festival, I know. But for a small college, it says we’ve got a lot of people who will work hard to put on an event that we can be proud of.
“It’s like saying: We can do this as well as anybody.”
Bandleader Holman will be making his fourth appearance at the festival, leading the world premiere of a work commissioned for the golden anniversary.
Not a bad way to celebrate Holman’s upcoming 90th birthday and the festival’s 50th.
The Elmhurst College Jazz Festival will feature Dee Dee Bridgewater at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 23; Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, 9:30 p.m. Feb. 24; Patrick Williams Big Band, 9 p.m. Feb. 25; and Bill Holman Big Band, 4:30 p.m. Feb. 26; at Elmhurst College’s Hammerschmidt Memorial Chapel, 190 Prospect Ave., Elmhurst; ticket prices vary. For complete schedule, visit www.elmhurst.edu/jazzfestival or phone 630-617-3388.
Howard Reich is a Tribune critic.
Twitter @howardreich
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