“Directing the jazz band is what I love doing, but you have to eat all your vegetables before you get the dessert!” Dr. Heath Jones said.
As the Oklahoma Christian University spring jazz band concert approaches, the coordinated efforts of students and faculty start coming together. Although the audience cannot view the weeks of practice and hours that were spent creating the performance, the Talon interviewed Dr. Heath Jones, the chair of the Music Department, and Nathan Hawley, a student in jazz band, about the behind-the-scenes action in the music department.
“My name is Heath Jones; this is my 26th year to be at Oklahoma Christian. I am a two-time University Jazz Educator of the Year in the state of Oklahoma… and am the chair of the Music Department,” Jones said.
“My name is Nathan Hawley, and I am a freshman majoring in electrical engineering. I play the drums, and I love jazz band,” Hawley said.
“The [Oklahoma Christian] jazz band has been named the college honor jazz band in the state twice, and we’ve performed at the convention. We’ve played on cruise ships, Royal Caribbean and Carnival, five times, and we’re about to perform again,” Jones said.
Jazz band is just one of the several bands Oklahoma Christian has. There are several differentiating factors with the instruments and sounds.
“It’s just a different type of music. I love jazz because it was named by our U.S. Congress as America’s classical music,” Jones said.
“There are some more kinds of progressive sounds from keyboards and the electric bass, but also the upright bass that’s in the orchestra is also in, and then a drum set, [which] is not usually in a symphonic band,” Jones said.
“One of our pieces called Just Friends is a Latin piece that has a lot of momentum… This semester has put me through some different styles. We have the Latin song, and then a ballad, which is another uncomfortable style,” Hawley said.
Challenges this year have been plentiful. As a result, the concert’s theme has been influenced and has been dubbed “overcoming hurdles.”
“In a sense, the main theme of this concert is overcoming hurdles. Because I have more class conflicts than I’ve ever had, and what makes it very difficult is we probably will not be able to meet as a whole group until the concert. So I’ve been able to prove myself as a director, but it’s the other things to overcome that are the hard things,” Jones said.
“You know, the kids in the jazz band are also in the basketball band, and while we’re trying to get our music ready for the jazz band, we did two double headers, which was a total of ten hours. That’s a lot. And then we have to set up and tear down with that too, and they’re trying to do all their tests too, so it’s kind of difficult to make that work for sure,” Jones said.
“Next week we’re going to a jazz contest in Weatherford, Oklahoma. That is another hurdle of mine; our motor pool at [Oklahoma Christian] is very small. It is about half the size of what it is at Memorial Road Church. So part of my hurdle was not only as a jazz band director, [but also] to raise the money so that we can charter a bus because I have 24 students and all the vans are reserved by our athletics teams,” Jones said.
In light of monetary challenges, Oklahoma Christian has taken notice of the needs of the music department in their fundraising endeavors.
“The school definitely recognizes that they have to raise funds to make things happen, and I’ve done quite a bit of fundraising, and the music department has raised over a million dollars just in the past seven years. So it takes a lot to run a music department,” Jones said.
“Luckily, I got money for us to go on a cruise. That’s a great thing, because most schools are attracting students with big trips to Europe, New York, and all these very high-dollar trips, and the cruise really is a bargain. A cool story about the cruise is that Royal Caribbean has now said that they’re not allowing any more student college groups [to perform on ships], but because of our good reputation with our students, they’re going to let us perform on the ship and come. We’ve done four performances with Royal Caribbean and one with Carnival,” Jones said.
Words of encouragement are given to the students and members of the jazz band by Hawley.
“Practice,” Hawley said.
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