December 11, 2024

On December 11, the MSM Jazz Orchestra performs a special concert celebrating the 40th anniversary of MSM Jazz Arts as well as paying tribute to one of MSM’s most illustrious alumni, pianist and composer John Lewis (BM ’52, MM ’53, HonDMA ’96), founder of the Modern Jazz Quartet, who passed away in 2001 at the age of 80.

In this MSM blog post, John K. Blanchard (MM ’89), Institutional Historian and Director of Archives at MSM, takes a look back at the history of jazz studies at MSM.

Manhattan School of Music instituted its first jazz degree program in 1984: a Master of Music in Jazz/Commercial Music Studies. This was followed by a bachelor’s program in 1987, and the Doctor of Musical Arts in Jazz Arts Advancement (with a unique emphasis on composition, performance, and pedagogy) began in Fall 2003.

Heads of the department have included Dick Lowenthal, Justin DiCioccio, Stefon Harris, and its current leader and Dean, Ingrid Jensen.

From the start, the new program garnered attention from high-level prospective students, as well as from industry professionals, critics, and the media: The first graduating class in 1985 included Rich DeRosa, Kai Fikentscher, Ted Piltzecker, John Riley, Chris Rosenberg, Richard Sussman, and Roland Vazquez; Tim Page declared in the New York Times that MSM “offers New York’s strongest training in contemporary music and jazz” (November 9, 1986); and  MSM’s first commercially available jazz recording, Shades of Time, won DownBeat magazine’s award for Best Jazz Big Band (College Division) in 1988.

Called Jazz Arts since 2002, the School’s recognition of the art form has roots in previous course offerings and ensembles dating from the 1970s. The School’s first official jazz ensemble, the Manhattan Stage Band gave its premiere public performance in February 1971, having been established in Fall 1970. A concert in 1973 by MSM’s Contemporary Jazz Ensemble, directed by Valerie Capers, honored jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie, who performed his piece Manteca with the students. Other artists visiting the School during this time included Milt Hinton, Dick Hyman, Marian McPartland, and Bobby Rosengarden. MSM added a formal Jazz Studies department and faculty for the first time in its 1977–78 curriculum, prior to the announcement of Jazz as a major seven years later.

As early as 1963, President John Brownlee was announcing intent to add Jazz to the curriculum, as part of his ambitious “New Manhattan Project” to expand offerings and relocate the East Harlem campus to the west side. A benefit concert for this initiative at Carnegie Hall on April 27, 1967, featured the Modern Jazz Quartet led by alumnus and MSM Trustee John Lewis, MJQ’s pianist and founder (their performance was later released by Atlantic Records on the album Blues at Carnegie Hall).

Lewis was one of several musicians in the 1950s who wished to study classical music at MSM (he majored in Theory for both his undergraduate and graduate degrees), and who would later become jazz genre luminaries — including alumni Max Roach, Ron Carter, Joe Wilder, Hugh Masekela, Julius Watkins, Art Davis, Robert “Brother Ah” Northern, Dick Katz, Herbie Mann, and Donald Byrd. Even Herbie Hancock (HonDMA ’23) enrolled to study with composer Vittorio Giannini in 1961, while Yusef Lateef attended in the late 1960s, first as an undergraduate classical flute major, then earning a master’s in music education.

We celebrate 40 years of a Jazz degree program and acknowledge that since the 1950s, MSM has been home to jazz musicians who have shaped and influenced the world of jazz. As Dean Jensen has said, “I am honored to have been handed the reins to one of the most prestigious jazz departments in the world [with] the most incredible faculty anyone could ever dream of, while receiving inspiration from the most brilliant lights on the current and future music scene in the form of our wonderful student body.”