Let’s talk Husky tenacity for a moment: Covid-19 quarantine bound, Adam Meckler (VPA), Michigan Tech’s Director of Jazz Studies, and his students in three of the Michigan Tech jazz ensembles, refused to let the quarantine stop the music: Michigan Tech students, from wherever the quarantine found them, teamed up via shared videos to undertake an experiment to blend music and dance, with similarly home-bound dance students at SUNY Brockport, for a one-of-a-kind dance and music collaboration that has allowed a ‘new’ sort of hybrid event to take shape as the final product of their
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Let’s talk Husky tenacity for a moment: Covid-19 quarantine bound, Adam Meckler (VPA), Michigan Tech’s Director of Jazz Studies, and his students in three of the Michigan Tech jazz ensembles, refused to let the quarantine stop the music: Michigan Tech students, from wherever the quarantine found them, teamed up via shared videos to undertake an experiment to blend music and dance, with similarly home-bound dance students at SUNY Brockport, for a one-of-a-kind dance and music collaboration that has allowed a ‘new’ sort of hybrid event to take shape as the final product of their experimentation. Please join us on Saturday, June 13, at 7:30 PM, for a live streamed Facebook event, “MTU Jazz: Quarantined,” on the Rozsa Center’s official Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/RozsaCenter.
“The project is a video/audio exchange between Meckler’s jazz students at Michigan Tech and students from the Department of Dance at the State University of New York-Brockport.” Mark Wilcox recently wrote in a Tech Today article. He continues, “Meckler’s partner at SUNY-Brockport is Greg Woodsbie, lead professional staff accompanist and music instructor. Meckler said the idea of a jazz/dance collaboration began to take shape when he and Woodsbie were undergraduates at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, nearly 20 years ago.”
According to Meckler, “…Please join the Michigan Tech jazz ensembles: The Workshop Big Band, R&D Big Band, and Jazz Lab Band as we put on a live online concert, the first of its kind at Michigan Tech! Students at MTU were on Spring Break when the order came down to stay at home and stay safe. It was that moment Jazz students at MTU knew that they’d have to get creative in order to continue to make music together. Each of our three big bands decided to remotely record and video one song that we had been working on during Spring semester. Additionally, 11 members of MTU’s Jazz program teamed up with 11 dance students at SUNY Brockport and collaborated on making music and dance videos.”
Students created music for these videos in a variety of ways including solo improvisations, multi-layered songs, and electronic music. The results of these collaborations will be premiered during our MTU Jazz: Quarantined concert, along with each big band’s final recording/video project. MTU’s Director of Jazz Studies Adam Meckler will present these videos live from the Rozsa Facebook Page. Meckler will also be available for a live Q&A session during a short intermission.
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