Creative Campus

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A Night of Experimental Jazz, a Creative Campus and New College sponsored event that exposed UA students to the stranger sides of jazz music, managed to captivate its audience of student and faculty members. Taking place in a highly atypical setting, Shelby Hall room 1093, the event was designed to completely draw its audience into the moods associated with experimental and freestyle jazz.
 
This goal was accomplished via set design. A team of interior design students including Elizabeth Harrel, Julea Bruce, Lindsay Northern, DeeDee Everett, and Stacy Summerville assembled a backdrop that mimicked the style of Jackson Pollock in its spasmodic nature, yet held a dark and whimsical nature with its distorted cityscape cut outs and comic centerpiece. The result of such a combination was something that was at once beautiful and chaotic, strange and somehow sensible. It worked perfectly for the occasion.

After a stint of delays, renowned percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani made himself at home, using his very standard drum set to wow the student/faculty audience with a flurry of ambient sound effects. His mastery of the percussive instruments left many asking how it was possible to produce such a wide range of frequencies using only cymbal, snare, and base drum. Nakatani answered quickly and easily with his use of drum sticks, cups, bricks, pieces of wood, and even destroyed instruments. It was truly an eye opening performance.

He was followed by legendary guitarist Eugene Chadbourne, a man who could be called an institution in the world of experimental guitarists with his extensive history of genre transcending work. Chadbourne was quick to show that he is a box-less musician, flipping from earsplitting, jaw dropping musical doodling to covering the likes of Johnny Cash and lending humorous vocals to the already outstanding blends of sound. His performance drew both laughter and awestruck gaping from the audience, a reaction that, no doubt, Chadbourne has become more than accustomed to receiving. The final round of performance also included Alabama’s own Dr. Andrew Dewar, who lent a few other worldly saxophone sounds to the flurry of percussion and guitar that already filled the lecture hall. 

Overall, “A Night of Experimental Jazz” served as one of two exposure points for the University of Alabama student body—the other point being the previous night’s “Beginning, Begin Again”. Students were given the opportunity to experience a highly unorthodox, very interesting music form first hand. While some view such music in a negative light, there are those who desire to see adventurous, more limit pushing music forms develop a larger following here at the University. “A Night of Experimental Jazz” took a well placed step towards achieving this goal.

Feel free to explore the websites of the artists:
http://adewar.web.wesleyan.edu

http://www.eugenechadbourne.com

http://www.hhproduction.org

http://www.themetakids.com/video