hey’re scatting in Jazz Vocal I. Da-ba-doo-wee-oo-dot. Ba-dop. Ba-doot’n- doodle-y-ah-va-dot. Ten students take turns, accompanied by bop great Hod O’Brien at the piano. One presses his lips together and makes a sound like a Dixieland trumpet. A few bars later, it’s someone else, her voice a clear, fluttering flute. Then, the growl of a budding Louis Armstrong, and—who knows what’s next? They’re flying high. Making it up. Renowned visiting jazz vocalist Stephanie Nakasian walks from one student to the next. Photos of Ella, Billie, and Sarah hang on the walls above them. “There’s a soulful place in the rhythm,” says Nakasian. “You lose yourself in it.” You could lose yourself in any room in the Foster Music Practice Hall at the School of Music. Los Angeles sax man Ron Dziubla (B.M. ’90) describes his first visit as a freshman in the Department of Studio Music and Jazz. “I remember walking down the hallways and hearing sax player after sax player—amazing players. And I thought, ‘Oh, my God. What did I walk into?’”

Today, at the far end of the hall, the Concert Jazz Band is cranking. The Salsa Orchestra will take over when they’re done. There are more than 15 small ensembles, ranging from the focused (Monk/Mingus and Horace Silver) to the broad (Funk/Fusion and Bop Brothers). Every student takes eight semesters of ensemble credits, and all the groups regularly perform and record. The Concert Jazz Band has toured the Middle East, Europe, and South America, and played at the Montreux and North Sea jazz festivals. Jazz Vocal I has been to Italy and Japan.

Writing students hear their compositions and arrangements read and recorded by the ensembles. Every Advanced Big Band Writing project, for instance, is recorded by the Concert Jazz Band.

“There’s nothing like standing in front of the saxophones and having them blow your music in your face,” says Gary Lindsay (M.M. ’78), director of Studio Music and Jazz Writing.

The students and ensembles have won so many Down Beat awards, from the jazz publication of the same name, that department chair Whit Sidener (B.M. ’69, M.M. ’71) has lost count. He guesses 112. More than any other music school. Why is the Studio Music and Jazz department so successful?

“I can sum it up in two words,” says Gary Lindsay. “Whit Sidener. He will not allow mediocrity. It is not in his blood. When he was working with the Concert Jazz Band, if things didn’t sound good, he didn’t sleep.”

Lindsay is a tad modest. He has performed with Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Mel Torme, and Johnny Mathis; his compositions and arrangements have been recorded by internationally known artists; he received a National Endowment for the Arts award in Jazz Composition; and his work has been nominated for a Grammy. In fact, every Studio Music and Jazz faculty member is an active musician with impressive credentials. Most have been at the University for more than 20 years.

“Quite a number of them are graduates of the program,” says Dean William Hipp. “We grew our own.”


he jazz program was one of the first in the country. Bill Lee, dean of the School of Music in the 1960s, conceived it and hired Jerry Coker away from Indiana to start it. Sidener, a student of Coker’s at Indiana, followed him to the University of Miami. Sidener “fell into the teaching thing” part-time in 1972. Coker left two years later, and Sidener took over. Under his direction, the program grew into a full department by 1983.

The University was on the cusp of a movement that saw jazz legitimized as an art form. Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, music educators realized jazz wasn’t a passing fad. Many credit Dave Brubeck with helping this along by bringing his group to universities in the sixties. As traditional swing music and the big band clubs went into decline, jazz found its way to concert halls and colleges.

“The way I learned to play in the fifties was to travel around and sit in and play with people,” says Larry Lapin (B.M. ’65, M.M. ’72), professor and director of Jazz Vocal Performance. “Back then, you couldn’t go to college and study jazz.”

Today, more than 120 U.S. colleges and universities offer jazz degrees. University of Miami’s graduate jazz program is ranked third in the country by U.S. News & World Report.

o now jazz is quarantined in an ivory tower? Hardly, says Sidener. The music has a tradition of non-tradition, of great musicians shaking things up. Saxophonist James Moody, on a recent visit to the University, told students he seeks out music he doesn’t like. And then he listens to it carefully. Even the department name, Studio Music and Jazz, reflects the desire to include more than just jazz. “‘Studio music’ is a catch-all,” Sidener says. “Because, what is jazz? It changes hourly.”

In its relatively short life, jazz has evolved and branched out like crazy—big band, bebop, West Coast cool, modal, hard bop, soul jazz, free jazz, fusion, experimental, and on. To a large extent, innovation has kept jazz out of the mainstream. Most Americans prefer comfortable melodies, rhythms, and harmonies. The jazz artists who still sell the most records are icons like Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. Innovators in their day, they’re now romanticized as part of the Jazz Age. Today’s most commercially successful musicians are the ones who pay homage to the greats, such as Harry Connick, Jr., or who blend jazz with pop, such as Diana Krall. Many program graduates cross over into pop, rock, funk, blues. And studying jazz, with its complex rhythms and harmonies, gives them a strong foundation.

“Bruce Hornsby (B.M. ’77) is a great example of someone who came in and did everything we asked,” says Sidener. “He studied jazz piano with [UM professor] Vince Maggio (B.M. ’82, M.M. ’84), and that made him a good musician. But he also did his own thing on the side.”

An unusually high percentage of graduates make their living in music. Lapin estimates that 90 percent of his students become performers, writers, music teachers, and the like. “It used to be that you’d either perform or teach,” says Dean Hipp. “That’s gone. Now someone might go into any number of hybrid offshoots in the music industry.”

The program has always emphasized more than just mastery of an instrument. Students learn theory, composition, arranging, and technical skills, and they get recording experience, especially important in today’s market. “A very small percentage of the music we hear is live,” says Sidener. “It’s mostly recorded. Today’s average ten-year-old has heard more music than the average adult in Beethoven’s time.”

Anything that happens at the school can be recorded, including student and faculty performances and the weekly jazz forums that host visiting musicians. On Thursdays when Sidener hosts UM Bandstand (WDNA, 88.9 FM in Miami, 11 a.m. to noon), he has plenty to choose from. Other practical training includes Entrepreneurship for Musicians, a class on job opportunities and marketing. Then there’s the network of alumni in major music centers like New York, Nashville, Chicago, and Los Angeles. But mostly, graduates excel because they spend so much time practicing and performing.

“When we study the stuff too much, it gets extreme,” says Stephanie Nakasian. “Then we’ve lost the subtlety of it.”

One student begins her riff, and the others bob and sway. They’re positively beaming.