Enthusiastic audience at EMC jazz concert

• Auditorium renamed the Vera Moody Concert Hall

Michael Reckord, Gleaner Writer

The Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Art's (EMC) School of Music on Saturday continued its concert series, celebrating its 50th anniversary with an evening of jazz featuring faculty members, graduates and special guest performers.

The concert was held in the school's auditorium, which, in a brief ceremony before the show, was renamed the Vera Moody Concert Hall, in honour of the founder of the school.

September's excellent classical recital by former graduate Dr Kaestner Robertson, now a music professor in Massachusetts, was attended by an appreciative-but-small audience. The crowd at Saturday's concert was both larger and more enthusiastic, which led one patron to comment that obviously Jamaicans prefer jazz to classical music.

School of Music Director Roger Williams, who emceed the concert, urged the audience to also attend the presentations scheduled over the next three months. They include a faculty recital of classical music on November 6, a recital by internationally acclaimed Jamaican jazz pianist Orville Hammond (currently a lecturer at the school), and the school's annual Carol Service on December 4.

The E-Park (Emancipation Park) band, led by founder Peter Ashbourne, kicked off the programme with three lively pieces, one a jazzed-up Healing in De Balm Yard and the third a jazz version of Bob Marley's Three O'clock Road Block. The brassy notes of Dean Fraser's special saxophone added an unusual sound to the items.

Next up for a solo performance on the sonorous grand piano was Jon Williams. Introducing his piece, Williams said that George Gershwin's Someone to Watch Over Me was one of his favourite songs, and he proceeded to play it with great sensitivity and loads of Liberace-style embellishments.

'Caught up'

Admitting that he was "caught up in the performances of the other musicians," Michael 'Ibo' Cooper nevertheless came onstage promptly to introduce the first singer, Sarina Constantine, as one of the first students in the institution's jazz programme. At the piano, Cooper accompanied her smokey-voiced singing of P.S. I Love You.

Cooper — along with his trap set, guitar and bass players — also accompanied the second singer, Phoebe-Ann Henry, a young woman with a very flexible voice. She delighted the audience with her version of Lush Life.

Conga drums player Ouida Lewis then added quite a bit of rhythm when she joined the band to take the programme into the intermission with a sprightly Evening Time.

After the break, Hammond showed how a master jazz musician can turn a simple song - in this case All The Things You Are - into a complex musical number. His listeners applauded the effort, and later showed equal approbation when Italian guitarist Samuele Vivian did the same thing with Marley's Redemption Song.

Guitarist Maurice Gordon and his band brought the evening to an exciting close with a set of tunes, including Gordon's own compositions, Blues for Ernie (for Ernest Ranglin) and She Only Wants to be With You.

As the satisfied patrons filed out, Hammond had returned to the grand piano to join the band in playing a particularly bouncy version of the folk song Nobody's Business But Me Own.