Sound Investment Jazz Ensemble To Play 51 Main

Jazz has been called America’s music, and looking at its history, one can see how interconnected it is with the country’s past. Its backbone incorporates features of ragtime, the American Negro spiritual and the blues — all forms of music developed by African Americans.

It also incorporates musical ideas from late-Romantic music, and many of the standards we know today were written by Jewish composers with fresh immigrant roots.

The 1930s saw a rise of big-band jazz, and around that time it became a part of the College music scene. As jazz transformed over the decades, the music stayed at the College.

In the early 1970s students coined the name “The Sound Investment” for the main jazz group on campus. Seven years ago the group became known as the Sound Investment Jazz Ensemble when it became an official college ensemble. On Oct. 26 Middlebury College’s Sound Investment Jazz Ensemble will perform a show at 51 Main.

The group studies a wide-variety of jazz styles, playing musical charts from big bands like the Count Basie Orchestra to more contemporary works and arrangements. For anyone who has seen the ensemble before, the performance Friday night is bound to be different in many ways. The group itself is constantly changing. Students leave because of graduation or to study abroad only to be replaced with fresh new talent.

Director of Jazz Activities at Middlebury College and director of the ensemble, Dick Forman, commented on how he works with this fluidity.

“I like to choose repertoire that take advantage of the strengths of current members,” he said.

The current group’s personality is conducive to playing various styles.

“Mainstream, straight-ahead jazz, with a nod to bop is mostly what we’re playing,” said Forman. “But over the course of a year, we’ll do everything from classic swing to contemporary jazz.”

Last spring when the 17-piece big band played at 51 Main, they filled the building, playing to an eager crowd that didn’t want them to leave. Paul Donnelly ’15, who plays bass in the ensemble, remembers the evening well.

“Playing at 51 Main last year was an interesting, crazy and great experience,” he said.  “Fitting both the size and sound of a 15-plus person band into such a small space was a whole lot of fun for the band and hopefully everyone else at 51 Main.”

Forman expects that Friday’s performance will go over well, and Donnelly is also excited about the show tomorrow night.

“With an even bigger band this year, Friday’s show should be a blast,” said Donnelly.

Big-bands are known for their rich, swinging sound, and Friday night should not disappoint.

The performance starts at 9 p.m. and lasts until 11 p.m. at 51 Main downtown. The group will also play on Nov. 16 at 9 p.m. in McCullough Student Center at a dance hosted by the Middlebury Swing Dance Club. Also, the group will perform in the concert hall at the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts on Dec. 1.