Jazz on the Campus

"If they ever turn professional," said Bandleader Stan Kenton, "I know a lot of guys who aren't going to like it." He was standing in Notre Dame's sprawling field house, where 200 cats had all but blown the roof off in the hippest college bash of them all--the second annual College Jazz Festival. When the musicians packed their instruments and headed back to their campuses last week, they left the panel of five judges- convinced that college combos these days are playing some of the finest and freshest jazz in the land.

With the exception of three Dixieland bands, all the competing outfits played modern jazz. But it was the big-band arrangements that seemed most striking, with their complex harmonies, catchy polyrhythms and strong emphasis on melody. Each of the 26 groups had submitted a tape recording before being accepted, played a 20-minute set in the opening sessions of the two-day festival. The ten finalists played additional 20-minute sets the second evening. Tired and a little lightheaded from several rounds of Irish coffee and all that jazz, the judges retired at midnight, quickly made their choices.

Winner in the small-combo category was the Dots Trio from West Virginia's Fairmont State College, led by talented, pompadoured Music Major Tom Mustachio, 18, at the piano. The trio, which plays at college and fraternity dances and at small clubs ($40 a night) in the Fairmont area, offered cool jazz arrangements such as Misty and The Lady Is a Tramp, was rewarded with an engagement at Chicago's Blue Note.

Winner in the big-band category was the ly-piece Lab Band from North Texas State College, which offered imaginative arrangements of standards, plus an original number by Composition Student Morgan Powell titled Powell One. Most remarkable winner of the numerous individual prizes was 233-lb. Vocalist Lois Nemser (she is undergoing psychiatric treatment to help reduce her weight), who won an ovation singing with The Four Axemen from the University of Cincinnati. In a low, wistful voice with overtones of both Jeri Southern and Julie London, 21-year-old Lois astounded judges with her thoroughly professional renditions of Gone With the Wind, My Funny Valentine, Guess Who I Saw Today.

After the Notre Dame festival, many listeners decided that the future of U.S. jazz may well lie on campus. Says Leon Breeden, band director of North Texas State: "After they graduate, many of the boys in our band will go on to teach at other schools and will start jazz bands there. The kids won't have to learn in smoke-filled honky-tonks."

*In addition to Kenton: Charles Suber, publisher of Down Beat magazine; Willis Conover, jazz programmer for The Voice of America; Frank Holzfeind, owner of Chicago's Blue Note; Robert Share, administrator of the Berklee (Mass.) School of Music.

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