From Primed for Sound Editor:
Prominent jazz composer and professor of music at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, David Baker, who passed away in March at the age of 84, will be honored in a most personal way by some of his former students Tuesday the 21st of June at Primary Sound Studios in Bloomington.
Students who Baker taught and inspired will gather at the studio to play and record several of his jazz compositions. The results of the two day scheduled session will be assembled into an album to be tentatively released as Volume Three.
Baker, a long time teacher of music at IU, is credited with over 2,000 jazz symphonic compositions. He also produced 65 recordings, 70 books and 400 articles all related to jazz. He first began teaching music at IU in the early sixties, and started the jazz program at IU in 1966, where no such program existed before.
With improvised playing rooted in the jazz music language, Baker pioneered and developed teaching methods that articulated jazz and codified improvisation. His breakthroughs allowed his students deeper access to the jazz lexicon and also standardized jazz instruction at the university level. As a writer discussing jazz, and a composer, Baker was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy as well.
A jaw injury in his early career as a jazz trombonist ended his ability to play a horned instrument with the rigor required of a professional, so improvising, Baker turned his considerable talents and extensive experience to educating and composing.
His original desire was to play in a symphony orchestra, but in the ‘50s nearly all symphonies in the US maintained a policy of racial segregation, leaving him to focus solely on jazz.
And focus he did. Baker, who was born in Indianapolis and graduated from Indiana University, is considered to have as much influence on the distinctly American musical genre as many of the all-time jazz greats.
Prominent jazz composer and professor of music at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, David Baker, who passed away in March at the age of 84, will be honored in a most personal way by some of his former students Tuesday the 21st of June at Primary Sound Studios in Bloomington.
Students who Baker taught and inspired will gather at the studio to play and record several of his jazz compositions. The results of the two day scheduled session will be assembled into an album to be tentatively released as Volume Three.
Baker, a long time teacher of music at IU, is credited with over 2,000 jazz symphonic compositions. He also produced 65 recordings, 70 books and 400 articles all related to jazz. He first began teaching music at IU in the early sixties, and started the jazz program at IU in 1966, where no such program existed before.
With improvised playing rooted in the jazz music language, Baker pioneered and developed teaching methods that articulated jazz and codified improvisation. His breakthroughs allowed his students deeper access to the jazz lexicon and also standardized jazz instruction at the university level. As a writer discussing jazz, and a composer, Baker was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy as well.
A jaw injury in his early career as a jazz trombonist ended his ability to play a horned instrument with the rigor required of a professional, so improvising, Baker turned his considerable talents and extensive experience to educating and composing.
His original desire was to play in a symphony orchestra, but in the ‘50s nearly all symphonies in the US maintained a policy of racial segregation, leaving him to focus solely on jazz.
And focus he did. Baker, who was born in Indianapolis and graduated from Indiana University, is considered to have as much influence on the distinctly American musical genre as many of the all-time jazz greats.
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