Well-known local musician and Hamilton College Jazz Archive Director Monk Rowe will present a free six-week online course titled “Jazz: the music, the stories, the players” beginning Feb. 2. Those interested in enrolling must register online at hamilton.edu/jazzcourse.
The program is designed to appeal equally to the casual listener, the avid fan and the proficient jazz player, according to Rowe. This is the third free course offered by the college via its relationship with the learning platform edX.
Incorporated into the course will be excerpts of more than 300 video and audio interviews with jazz greats and their supporting musicians that are part of Hamilton’s Jazz Archive and that include rarely heard stories of the lives and experiences of these artists. Select scholarly readings and demonstrations offered by Rowe, a working musician, will also be part of the course.
Those who successfully complete the course may receive an instructor-signed certificate with the institution’s logo to verify achievement.
Rowe will approach jazz from a listener’s perspective while calling on the recorded interviews of professional jazz musicians to engage students with this sometimes inscrutable aural experience. The basic components of jazz — swing, improvisation, structure and personal expression — will be addressed, and students will be guided in listening, responding, counting and internalizing the concepts that make jazz work.
Rowe’s new book, “Jazz Tales from Jazz Legends,” a distillation of the jazz archive interviews, was published by Couper Press last fall. The book includes interviews with Dave Brubeck, Steve Allen, Marian McPartland, Joe Williams, Bela Fleck, Maria Schneider and Lionel Hampton, among many others, as well as with former members of bands led by Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman and Stan Kenton.
“Jazz Tales’” excerpts are organized into categories including first-hand accounts of life on the road, inspiration, race and jazz, improvisation and work inside the studios. Rowe provides informative commentary with personal insights into the accomplishments and personalities of more than one hundred of these performers.
In addition to his position as director of the jazz archive, Rowe has also been an instructor in saxophone since 1995. He has personally conducted the videotaped interviews in the jazz archive. As an active pianist and saxophonist, he has also composed and arranged music for numerous ensembles, including the Fredonia Alumni Jazz Ensemble and the Utica Symphony.
