TABLE OF CONTENTS |
FRONT PAGE
| NEXT ARTICLE |
PREVIOUS ARTICLE |
UNC HOMEPAGE
You could hear the music well before turning the corner to Jim Ketch's Hill
Hall office. The swinging sounds of jazz pulsing through the hall carried
energy and elation that would bring a smile to anyone's face. Was that a
recording, or was somebody in the room playing?
A bit of both, actually. Ketch was working with a student, combining his
pupil's trumpet playing with a recording. "Professor Ketch is notorious for
long lessons," the student said after his session ended 10 minutes late. But
that's only because Ketch's love for jazz can't be governed by time.
His love of music, devotion to teaching and sharing his love of jazz extends
beyond the classroom every spring with the Carolina Jazz Festival, now in its
23rd season. The festival's artistic director, Ketch also directs the UNC Jazz
Studies Program and the UNC Jazz Band.
"My mind never stops thinking about the festival," Ketch said. Planning begins
as soon as one festival ends. Performers have started calling Ketch, asking to
be on the bill.
Ketch first experienced a jazz festival as a freshman at Indiana State
University when trumpeter Clark Terry performed.
"[He] was the first soloist that I had ever experienced that close and in
person," Ketch said. "It was really life-changing in the sense that he
affirmed: `That's what I want to do. I want to do what you do. I want to play
my trumpet. I want to play jazz. I want to play his music.'"
To Ketch, jazz is about more than just playing music. It is about the emotion
that comes through the music and takes the player and the listener to a
different time and place.
"It's stories and it's experiences and a little heartbreak, I'm sure," Ketch
said.
In 1997, he brought Terry to perform and teach at the jazz festival with the
intention of having him inspire students as he had been inspired when he was
their age.
At a performance with the Chapel Hill High School Band, Terry stopped the
student performance. "You're missing the point," Terry said to the students.
"This is a field holler, and there's someone in the sun working." As Terry
began to play, Ketch said the listener could envision working out in the field
and all the emotions that come with that work, even if he had never been
there.
This year's jazz festival lasts through the month of February and into the
early days of March. But the festival did not start out as such an elaborate
celebration.
When Ketch joined the University's music department in the fall of 1977, he
knew the best way to attract high school students to music was through a
festival. With only $500, Ketch began inviting former colleagues to perform at
a weekend gathering, and from those humble beginnings grew the Carolina Jazz
Festival.
The two-day celebration grew in the early 1980s when Ketch and the Carolina
Union Activities Board pooled resources and funding, extending the festival to
three days.
"We have a wonderful relationship with the union, and they have stuck with us
all these years," Ketch said.
Collaboration with the Union Activities Board brought the festival into full
view for other University departments, bringing the Black Cultural Center,
Ackland Art Museum, Communications Studies Department and Playmakers Repertory
Company into the mix.
This year the Carolina Union Performing Arts series has scheduled Sonny Rollins
to play in Memorial Hall during the festival, which Ketch said "is like saying,
`Could we afford to have Ghandi come in to lecture?' [Rollins] is probably the
greatest living exponent of the music, if you think of who carries the torch of
jazz."
"Every festival has performances," Ketch said. "That's what jazz is about,
getting up and expressing yourself."
But this year's festival will also include six artists who will be teaching in
a variety of departments for four days during the festival.
The festival will focus on the life and jazz experience of Louis Armstrong, who
would have been 100 years old this year. The theme focuses on more than just
Armstrong's music but on how his music brought people of all races and
backgrounds together through a language without words.
"I'm excited to see how it all works out. I'm sure there'll be some lessons
learned in trying to do [a festival] so expansive," Ketch said. "We probably
won't do it this way every year, but when you've got Louis being 100, you might
as well go for it."
And go for it he will. To grasp what Jim Ketch is about, you have to catch the
sounds that have held sway over his life. As the message on his office door
says: "The world doesn't need more notes, but it can always use more music."
For a listing of activities surrounding the Carolina Jazz Festival, see
"Celebrating jazz and 'Satchmo'" in the Table of Contents or see
http://www.artscarolina.org or call 3-ARTS.
TABLE OF CONTENTS |
FRONT PAGE
| NEXT ARTICLE |
PREVIOUS ARTICLE |
UNC HOMEPAGE