Tennessee jazz needs some help

[Monika Herzig]

This comes from Jim Ferguson [e-mail] - jazz bassist/ vocalist in Nashville

Dear friends of jazz, the arts, and cultural diversity,
I’m writing to ask each of you for your help, communicating from a mental and emotional bunker here in the RED state of Tennessee. As you know, most states are facing serious budget shortfalls, and Tennessee is no exception With no state income tax and just a modest investment tax, Tennessee gets 2/3 of it’s operating monies from its draconian 9.25 – 9.75% sales tax (depending on local option add-ins in different counties). With the current dip in retail, we’re on the ropes, financially. Of course, we have to tighten our belts in every area of government, including higher education.
The President of Middle Tennessee State University established the MTSU Oversight Steering Committee late last year and tasked them with making recommendations to reduce our school’s operating budget by a maximum of nineteen million dollars or a minimum, with projected stimulus help, of twelve million dollars. Now we’re facing the results of their deliberations.
For starters, there has been serious talk of closing our award-winning 24/7 jazz radio station, WMOT, Jazz 89.5. This is a 40 year old treasure in Middle Tennessee and our only jazz station. WMOT consistently programs a variety of quality jazz music. Additionally, they leave local artist’s recordings in their rotation indefinitely. For instance, they still play an occasional track from my first 1999 release. This is a huge help for our local artists in the Nashville market.
This past Monday morning brought the final recommendations from the OSC, including a proposal to *eliminate*, not trim, the only jazz degree programs in Middle Tennessee, MTSU’s BM and MM in Jazz Studies. Also on the chopping block are our degree programs in Music Theory and Composition. (Academic pencil pushers give me a headache.) A few weeks prior, on a Friday afternoon, our music department chair was given the draconian job of assigning degrees of importance to each of our major areas and was told they were due the following Tuesday. Believe it or not, Jazz wasn’t at the bottom of his list. It was next to the bottom. Theory/Comp was last. He explained to me this morning that he had to put something into those slots, and these two major areas seemed least critical to the mission statement of the music school, which he said is music education based. I don’t envy Dr. Riordan or the Oversight Steering Committee their respective tasks or blame them for our financial situation. We don’t have time for assigning blame, and it would do little toward our immediate critical need to save our jazz program and our radio station. With politics and ignorance at work, as usual, and we could lose this fight without everyone’s help.
Since the revelation of these recommendations has hit local papers and news outlets, we’re in the unfortunate position of trying to convince our recruits for next fall to not panic, but rather, to let things play out. Because the President wants to use March and April for town hall-styled meetings with students and faculty, he won’t make his decisions on cuts till May, at the earliest. By then other schools will have committed their scholarship monies, so anyone foolish enough to gamble on MTSU could risk being left out in the cold. It’s clear that some serious, immediate damage has already been done and is likely undoable. Still, we can, hopefully, affect the long-term results of this decision making process with your help.
It might be helpful for you to know that Nashville also has a wonderful non-profit community jazz school, the Nashville Jazz Workshop. This school holds night classes for all ages four nights per week and features local and national artists in twice-monthly concert programs. There are rotating instrumental ensemble courses based on well-known jazz groups, basic chart writing, rotating vocal jazz courses based on individual composers from the Great American Songbook, ballad singing, latin jazz interpretation, and jazz appreciation courses for non-performers. The MTSU Jazz Studies Program and WMOT Jazz 89.5 are symbiotically linked with the Nashville Jazz Workshop. These three entities are supportive of each other in such critical ways that a threat to one of them is a threat to all. Together, they offer a refreshing breath of diversity to our cultural atmosphere. If you were to ask Nashville’s country musicians, symphony players, chamber orchestra members, bluegrass musicians, rock and pop musicians, opera and theater groups, or anyone else from our creative arts family, they’d overwhelmingly tell you that WMOT and the MTSU Jazz Studies Program are vital to our community. We can’t afford to lose them.
We’re asking concerned professionals, educators, jazz writers and historians, and alums to write letters in support of our jazz program atMiddle Tennessee State University. We’d like you to include a plea for WMOT as well. Thanks in advance for any help you might give us. I’m including Email addresses for the principals in the decision making process below. Also included for you to copy are our director of Jazz Studies, Don Aliquo, and our other full-time jazz faculty member, Jamey Simmons. For convenience sake, I’ll put all the Email addresses together here so you can simply copy and paste once. [e-mail]; [e-mail]; [e-mail];[e-mail]; [e-mail]; [e-mail]; [e-mail];
Please feel free to forward this letter to others who might be concerned. Thanks again for your help.
Sincerely,
Jim Ferguson- MTSU Adjunct Professor of Jazz Voice and Double Bass
_______________________________________
Dr. Sidney McPhee, University President
615 898-2622
[e-mail]

Dr. Kaylene Gebert, Provost
Exec VP and Provost, Faculty-Staff
[e-mail]
[e-mail]
Dr. John McDaniel
Dean, College of Liberal Arts
[e-mail]
Dr. George Riordan
Director, School of Music
[e-mail]

[Jerry Tachoir]

Well put Jim, I'm sure the Pittsburgh jazz fans can relate. Pittsburgh is a strong jazz community and many great jazz players came from Pittsburgh.
We all need to do our share to educate or we risk the chance of loosing America's true musical artform - "Jazz". As an artist/clinician for Conn-Selmer, I frequently visit and lecture at colleges and universities throughout the US, Canada, and Europe. I find it absolutely necessary to talk about jazz and play examples. So many classical trained musicians are afraid of Jazz, because a lot of it has to do with chords and improvisation. Jazz is not something one is born to do, it is a vocabulary you learn and develop just as if you were learning a language. You must list to jazz to learn how musical lines are developed and how the great players comp behind the soloist. These are skill developed by observation and then applying to ones own technique.
Jazz is the ultimate form of creativity in Music and the main reason I personally had to leave my symphony experience.
Let's all help to expose this great improvised music to our youth. I can guarantee they will like it once they hear it played. Jazz is cool and very enjoyable to see and hear the great improvisers do their thing.
We need not forget that jazz didn't stop at 1929. Jazz evolved and is continuing to evolve; don't fight it, be flexible and embrace it. Change is good and necessary!
Thanks
Jerry Tachoir
www.avitajazz.com