By HENRY COLT
Sentinel Staff Writer
The half dozen masters degree students in the UCLA Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz Performance have joined forces with another band, the Kyle Athayde Dance Party, at this year’s Sitka Jazz Fest, Feb. 6-8.
“It’s a merger,” said Daniel Seeff, West Coast director of the Herbie Hancock Institute, a highly selective program that accepts just one student per instrument every two years. “The Institute band is sort of functioning as the core of the big band. Our rhythm section is the rhythm section, our horn players are mixed in.”
The two ensembles met in the Sitka High auditorium this morning for their first rehearsal and immediately started warming up.
There was tuning. There were scales in many keys, on many instruments. There was electric bass noodling and syncopated drumming and silk-smooth saxophone runs, and something punchy from a trumpet.
Bass player Emma Dayhuff sets up in the Sitka High band room this morning. Professional jazz musicians from around the country arrived in Sitka today for the annual Sitka Jazz Festival. (Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)
There was Kyle Athayde – mastermind behind the merger – playing a vibraphone.
Then he left the vibraphone and started surveying the musicians, arms folded, like a father evaluating his progeny.
“This is going to be fun,” he said.
But one Herbie Hancock player, Roni Eytan, though he’ll play in an Institute-only concert Friday evening, won’t get to take part in the big-band fun.
“He’s not involved because he plays the harmonica,” Seeff said. “Nobody writes big band (music) for harmonica, just like nobody would write big band for oboe, or for banjo.”
He said there have been “probably four” great jazz harmonica players in history, and that he thinks Eytan may end up being the fifth.
More information on the Jazz Fest can be found on sitkajazzfest.com.
