The UNC Jazz Workshop was a very fun and interesting experience for me. It allowed me to contextualize the history of Jazz that I learned with professor Alamo in Summer Session 1 and kind of contextualize that knowledge in a modern setting. Below are my four biggest takeaways:
Journalism is Fun
I really enjoyed taking the journalism course and learning some different things specific to journalism that I wouldn’t have known had I taken the course. From things to being careful with how you title an article to how you can hyperlink and tag the article in order to be more apparent in Google searches. I think this experience will push me to take a couple of journalism classes at UNC before I graduate, schedule and academics permitting. The post that probably highlights a few of the things I’ve learned in the journalism course pretty well is written here.
The Kids Are Alright
It was fun watching high schoolers and college students younger than me learn how to make music and get better at their instruments. I enjoyed being able to observe the process of them figuring out how to play as a cohesive unit in their combos, and also watching the instructors kinda guide them in their solos but largely letting them figure it out. That sort of self-discovery in the music is very important, and I appreciated that the instructors sort of let them find it themselves rather than dictate what they needed to play and when in a solo. Jazz is a largely improvisational and experiential music, so them feeling the notes and rhythms through for themselves was so important to me, and I was glad the instructors shared this method of teaching.
Juan Alamo is a Beast On Vibraphone
The La Fiesta Latin Jazz Combo was so freaking fun to watch. It was my favorite concert of the whole week. Latin has always been a fun music to me and the percussion heavy sections throughout that are written and codified into Latin’s very existence always spoke to me. When Juan Alamo would solo it was so cool watching a virtuousic performer just rip up and down the keyboard. I knew he had to be good because he was a professor at UNC, but actually watching the man work was amazing. You can see where I livetweeted it under the #UNCJazz tag on Twitter.
Cultural Enrichment
For me, I feel like summer 2021 was the Summer of Jazz. I took a jazz history clas, I took the jazz history workshop, I’ve been listening to lots of jazz music. It’s been a very enriching and exciting experience overall for me. I had always like jazz music and Fusion music and old-timey type music like Frank Sinatra due to video games like Bioshock and Fallout and learning more about the genres that molded the aesthetic for that time was amazing. I feel better knowing what I do about jazz. I recommend this class to any music majors that would like to learn more about a genre of music and also anyone who needs a fun way to get the Experiential Education credit.