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Jazz Ensembles

Ray Anderson, Director
ray.anderson@stonybrook.edu

Thomas Manuel, Endowed Artist in Residence 
thomas.manuel@stonybrook.edu

About
The Stony Brook Jazz program is led by Ray Anderson, chosen five times as “Best Trombonist” in Downbeat Magazine’s Critics Poll. Ray conducts The SBU Jazz Orchestra, Stony Brook’s big band and supervises the small ensembles along with talented graduate assistants. Thomas Manuel, Director of the Jazz Loft in Stony Brook, performs in The SBU Jazz Orchestra and assists in the administration of the jazz program.

The SBU Jazz Orchestra plays a wide variety of big band music, covering the entire scope of jazz history and reaching into the future. Classic compositions of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, Thad Jones and others are featured next to more modern works, including compositions by Stony Brook students and Ray Anderson. Undergraduates, graduates, and musicians from the local community, often including Stony Brook faculty from different departments, play together. The band is known for its precision and blend, as well as individual creativity. In that regard, the band is a living, evolving entity, exploring the essential and lively tension between composition and improvisation.

SBU Jazz Orchestra

The Jazz Combos include everyone from beginning undergraduates to virtuoso jazz players, with every level in between. The advanced groups play highly original compositions and arrangements by members of the group, the less advanced focus on standards of the jazz repertoire, but always with a focus on originality. As with the big band, the focus is on both the group's sound as a band, i.e. how we play together, and the individual's creativity, i.e. how we tell our own story.

Meeting Times

Jazz Big Band Ensemble - MUS 264
Monday Evenings
Jazz Combos - MUS 267 (Tuesday evenings) or MUS 289 (Wednesday evenings)

Beginning Improvisation - MUS 189 (Wednesday evenings)

JAZZ AUDITIONS
Everyone is welcome to register for the classes but you must audition to participate. Sign up for an audition time on the sheets will be posted outside the Music Office (3304, Music Building, Staller Center). Thursday and Friday, Jan. 26 and 27, 2023

SMALL JAZZ COMBOS
As much as possible, this course will be run just like a rehearsal for a band performance.  We will be covering a wide range of music with an emphasis on the interplay between the group and the individual. Knowledge of the music’s history and an understanding of the African-American culture that gave birth to Jazz, is essential to understanding the music, and to that end there will be some assigned reading.

LARGE JAZZ ENSEMBLE (THE SBU Jazz Orchestra)
As much as possible, this course will be run just like a rehearsal for a band performance.  We will be covering a wide range of music. Primary emphases are on section and whole band blend and sound, as well as individual creativity and expression inside of the group. We will be exploring the essential jazz tension between composition and improvisation. We have a concert at the end of each semester. 

MUS 189 BEGINNING JAZZ IMPROVISATION
In this course you will learn to play jazz by practicing daily on your instrument and playing in class. Harmony, melody, phrasing, rhythm and the study of the African-American roots of jazz will be included.