“Damn, those guys can play.”
That’s the impression Jazz Combos member Cooper Sadefur is hoping to make with the University of North Georgia’s Jazz Combos group.
Jazz Combos had its first performance of the semester Sept. 24 in the Gloria Shott Performance Hall on the Dahlonega campus.
While being titled Jazz Combos, the group also goes by the name “Coop and the Jazz Cats.” The concert featured 20 minutes of uninterrupted jazz classics by artists such as Duke Ellington, as well as an original piece by Sadefur.
Sadefur, junior music composition major, says that Jazz Combos serves as an extension of the UNG Nighthawk Jazz Band. “It is not mandatory, but we just have so much fun in there that we want to do more jazz and have a more tight-knit group experience.”
Jazz Combos is mentored by Dr. Steven Walker, director of percussion studies and music technology lecturer. Walker has been a professor at UNG for 10 years, and along with Jazz Combos, also directs the Nighthawk Jazz Band and UNG Percussion Ensemble.
“UNG has given me a lot of opportunities to grow personally, professionally, and they’ve given me the opportunity to bring those opportunities to students which is also very fulfilling,” said Walker.
The most notable aspect that sets Jazz Combos apart from other groups within the music department is that they are largely student-led. This semester, Jazz Combos features six performers, but no designated director.
Walker said, “These students direct these combos, they put themselves together, and they choose their own music. And you know, kind of dive in by themselves, and I leave them alone to do that for a number of weeks… But this is very free, they do what they want.”
Sadefur also said, “We take our feedback from him [Walker] and we apply it to what we know and venture off into some of the things that we don’t know.”
As a student-led group, Jazz Combos has been prone to some challenges like holding themselves and each other accountable in order to produce a successful product.
“Because it’s not directed, they really have to rely on themselves to be motivated, to have integrity… You know they have to be responsible for themselves. They are still young people and they want to do young people things and have young people fun,” said Walker.
Sadefur noted that another challenge of Jazz Combos is learning everybody’s vocabulary. “No two musicians are going to play jazz the same way. So the hardest part of putting a combo together is getting an ensemble that sounds like a group and not just like, you know, five people playing.”
“Jazz is and always has been, you know, like a community, music making, and the listeners and the enjoyers of the music are what brings it all together,” Sadefur said.
