Big City Sounds Fill Small Town Campus During Jazz Music Workshop
Jul 18, 2018, 5:51 PM | Updated: 9:38 pm
EPHRAIM, Utah – Summer is full of workshops and clinics for kids, but there is a very unique one underway this week at Snow College.
With participating faculty from The Juilliard School and other prestigious music programs around the country, some Utah students are finding out what jazz music is all about, from sounds you’d usually only hear in a big city, but those sounds are making a lot noise in Ephraim right now.
“It is a pretty remarkable thing. We have been doing it well over ten years now,” said Carl Allen, who’s the artistic consultant for the summer jazz workshop at Snow College, where he has become a regular for a week each July.
“We are amazed at the talent that comes out and what people are doing outside of Utah when they have left here and part of that I think comes from being at the workshop,” he said.
He teaches students in a small setting about the language he loves, called jazz.
“It is the music that has inspired and influenced so many genres of music, but it is music that allows oneself to really express who they are,” Allen added.
The students this week range in age from 12 to 28 years old. Snow College believes they are learning from some of the best musicians in the world, and these musicians come to rural Utah believing this is perhaps the best place to learn to play jazz.
“What is unique about this opportunity for students is that they can come here and focus intently on jazz, without a lot of distraction, just on making music and learning this language,” said Vance Larsen, Chair of the Horne School of Music at Snow College.
With a four-year bachelor’s degree available at Snow, the workshop allows students to interact with faculty members who may help them to pursue a graduate degree and enjoy the collaboration that comes by playing together with jazz musicians.
“These are songs that you can go anywhere in the world and people you have never met before and have something in common where you can share the stage together,” said Allen.
There is a free concert Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. on the Snow College campus.
Big city sounds fill a small town campus during a Jazz music workshop. Why top faculty members from around the country want to travel to rural Utah to teach young students about this genre of music. Watch @KSL5TV at 6. @SnowCollege pic.twitter.com/cWCtZCvmxm
— Sam Penrod (@KSLsampenrod) July 18, 2018
RELATED LINK: https://www.snow.edu/academics/fineart/music/jazzworkshop/index.html/