Ravinia_2018_Week

BRIDGES

WINNERS

Originally from

Columbus, OH,

Sam Blakeslee

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,

Se-

lective Coverage

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.

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.

RSMI JAZZ DIRECTORS

Billy Childs

is one

of today’s foremost

American com-

posers, marrying

his musical heri-

tage with Western

Neoclassical tra-

ditions. A native

of Los Angeles, he

was admitted to

the USC Community School of the Performing

Arts at age 16, going on to earn a BM in Com-

position under Morton Lauridsen and Robert

Linn. Childs has since recorded and performed

with such artists as Yo-Yo Ma, Sting, Renée

Fleming, Chick Corea, Jack DeJohnette, Dave

Holland, Ron Carter, Chris Botti, Joe Hender-

son, and Wynton Marsalis. Additionally, he has

been commissioned for orchestral and chamber

works by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Detroit

Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Master Cho-

rale, Kronos Quartet, Lincoln Center Jazz Or-

chestra, American Brass Quintet, Ying Quartet,

and Dorian Wind Quintet, among others. Now

president of Chamber Music America, he was

previously awarded its Composer’s Grant, and

his honors also include a Guggenheim Fellow-

ship and Doris Duke Performing Artist Award,

the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Mu-

sic Award, and four Grammy Awards.

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

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

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

JUNE 1 – JUNE 10, 2018 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE

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