Don’t tell Todd Wilkinson that jazz doesn’t matter in Kansas.
Consider, for example, most anything heard on the radio today.
Hard rock? Heavy metal?
“They both come from jazz,” Wilkinson told a group of Iola High School jazz band musicians Tuesday morning.
Country music? Pop?
“Same thing,” he said.
Wilkinson said today’s music, in terms of musical style, can be traced to the first half of the 20th century — when jazz was king.
But Wilkinson wasn’t in Iola to talk history. He was there to share his love of jazz, with a sprinkling of musings and nuggets of wisdom he’s learned in his career as an educator and jazz musician.
“People ask me what I do,” he said. “I’m a saxophone player.”
He also happens to be an associate professor of music and director of jazz studies at Ottawa University.
“I’m a saxophone player with other income streams,” he joked.
Wilkinson was in Iola as part of a workshop sponsored by the Sleeper Family Trust. He worked with IHS students through the morning before they performed in the afternoon for Iola Middle School students.
The workshop, IHS music teacher Larry Lillard said, had the students “mesmerized” as Wilkinson darted from student to student with tips on technique.
Wilkinson’s first comments to students?
“You play too loud,” he said.
Think of playing jazz as if you were engaged in a conversation, he said.
“You don’t just go ‘BLAH, BLAH, BLAH.’”
Rather, the music should be succinct and build to a crescendo, much as if a person were speaking a sentence. “You don’t start out TALKING LOUDLY, and then trail off…” he demonstrated.
Jazz crescendos come and go in waves, he added.
“The best music is dramatic.”
IN HIS first year at Ottawa, Wilkinson’s goal remains to promote jazz and jazz education among musicians, particularly young ones. Before then, Wilkinson’s teaching career stretched from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, The University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, South Australia College of Advanced Education, the University of Missouri at Kansas City, the University of Kansas, Washburn University, and Penn Valley and Longview community colleges in Missouri.
“I’m going to do whatever I can,” to get kids enthusiastic about jazz music, he said. If a school calls with an invitation, “I’m on it.”
His goal is to continue developing and building Ottawa’s music and jazz departments, while connecting with area high school students and their instructors.
He also spoke to a class of drama students during his visit.
“I don’t know a lot about drama, but I know enough to warn them about some things,” he told the Register afterward. “They’re all good kids.”