Ravinia 2019, Issue 1, Week 1

Slow Growth/New Growth is meant to repre- sent the personal process of refining creative, musical, and spiritual development. Oftentimes bringing an idea to its fullest, most mature form is an arduous ordeal where personal views are challenged and behavior patterns must be bro- ken down. While it is the least glamorous part of any creative process, this type of development is what often yields the greatest reward. This piece not only depicts the challenges, but also the cel- ebration that comes with the successes. Writing this piece for me was not only to try to docu- ment my own process in a meaningful way, but to also let it serve as a reminder that the slow, painstaking growth is what ultimately leads to the most fulfilling progress. – Sam Blakeslee Originally from Columbus, OH, Sam Blakeslee is a New York–based trombonist and composer who holds a BM in Jazz Studies from Youngstown State and an MM in Classical Performance from the University of Akron. In addition to attending RSMI in 2010, he has participated in the Kennedy Center’s Bet- ty Carter Jazz Ahead program and Banff Cen- tre’s Workshop for Jazz and Creative Music. Be- fore leaving Ohio, Blakeslee worked extensively in jazz education on the faculties of Youngstown State (jazz trombone instructor), Cuyahoga Community College (jazz prep program di- rector), and the Cleveland Institute of Music (improvisation instructor). His international performance credits include the Fano, Moscia- no San Angelo, and Parma (Italy) Jazz Festivals, as well as the Deutsche Musikfest in Chemnitz, Germany, and freelance gigs playing alongside such artists as Joe Lovano, Aretha Franklin, Bernard Purdie, and Derrick Gardner, among many others. Blakeslee leads two ensembles: his 17-piece “Large Group,” which was recently in residence at the DownBeat -acclaimed Blu Jazz club, and a quintet with Ohio and New York musicians that backed his 2017 debut album, Selective Coverage . Haunted Lullaby of the Forgotten is a work in- spired greatly from my memory of Fiddler on the Roof and was originally written with words to help guide the color, tone, and mood of the piece. The lyrics convey a narrator comforting an unknown character during their final mo- ments, trying to relax their fear of being forgot- ten before the inevitable. While the hypnotic piece grows and shifts, echoing its sinister and tragic origins, the lullaby eventually closes with the final resting phrase in the violin, “I, the for- gotten, will remember you.” – Zach Bornheimer Composer and saxophonist Zach Bornheimer has been a featured artist interna- tionally in both roles, including performances in Florida, Chicago, Italy, France, and England, as well as radio broadcast. A 2017 fel- low at RSMI, he has also been a Y2K Fellow at the University of South Florida, where he earned an MM in Jazz Composition. He has twice won the Owen Prize in Jazz Composition, for his original Elegy and his arrangement of Donny McCaslin’s Henry , and his Color Shift made him both a 2015 Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award finalist and a featured artist on the 2017 symposium for the Society of Jazz Arrangers and Composers’ New Music Workshops. Also a finalist for the VSA’s International Young Soloist Award in 2017, Bornheimer has recently joined the faculty of Eckerd College. His own mentors have included Maria Schneider (composition), Jack Wilkins (saxophone), Valerie Gillespie (flute), and Brian Moorhead (clarinet), and he has performed alongside such artists as Chick Corea, the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Or- chestra, and The Modern Gentlemen. Septet is a piece for the fusion of the two ensem- bles that function at the core of their respective legacies—the jazz rhythm section and the classi- cal string quartet. The work was written with the goal of creating a homogeneously functioning ensemble. Part of the solution to combining two ensembles of such individual distinction was to mix and match the function and the stylistic ap- proach of the instruments. All instruments have written notation in a “contemporary classical” style. At the same time, all instruments are called upon to improvise at one time or another. Septet was written with the consideration of jazz trios and composers including Ahmad Jamal Trio, Bill Evans Trio, Miles Davis’s Second Quintet, Jason Moran & the Bandwagon, The Bad Plus, György Ligeti, Béla Bartók, Ruth Crawford-See- ger, and Milton Babbitt, among others. – Gene Knific Pianist, compos- er, and arranger Gene Knific is a recipient of four ASCAP Young Jazz Composer Awards and eight DownBeat Mag- azine Awards in addition to an honors graduate of the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music with degrees in jazz per- formance and composition. He has also been invited to perform at the Kennedy Center’s Betty Carter Jazz Ahead program, and his trio has been featured at the Fontana Chamber Arts Summer Series and the Elkhart Jazz Festival. Re- cent solo highlights have included performances with Joe Lovano and Miguel Zenón and tours to the Copenhagen Opera House, Montmartre Jazzhus, and Xiquitsi and Schlern Music Festi- vals. As a composer/arranger, Knific has earned readings by the Cleveland Orchestra and Amer- ican Composers Orchestra, and he has had a big-band work recorded with rock icon Steve Miller. His Relapse was recently performed and recorded by the Buffalo Philharmonic. After commissioning 10 Great American Songbook arrangements from Knific, the Merling Trio tapped him again for a Bach arrangement and an original work for a Kalamazoo Bach Festival concert. MAY 31 – JUNE 9, 2019 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE 97