ONLINE: UW Jazz Studies Program & Tandem Press

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UW Jazz Studies Program

Trombonist Gregory Scheer of the UW-Madison jazz ensembles recording at Audio for the Arts.

In addition to its work with a worldwide roster of visual artists, fine art printer Tandem Press is also associated with the UW-Madison School of Education; students gain experience by working as studio assistants to the master printers. Since 2014, the UW Jazz Studies Program has also been a Tandem Press collaborator through an ongoing concert series featuring student ensembles. With in-person concerts on hold, Tandem and Jazz Studies have collaborated with Audio for the Arts on a video version of the concert series, featuring music by student and faculty composers presented alongside prints by Tandem Press artists. Find the premiere on YouTube.

Mead Witter School of Music Jazz Studies Program & Tandem Press livestream concert, via the YouTube page.

media release: UW-Madison’s Tandem Press and the Mead Witter School of Music’s jazz program will premiere a collaborative video production at 6 pm on February 12, 2021. The video features print works created by Tandem Press resident artists alongside new jazz compositions performed by UW’s student jazz ensembles. The video will be released and archived on the Mead Witter School of Music’s YouTube channel at youtube.com/meadwitterschoolofmusic. The concert can also be viewed on the Tandem Press YouTube channel on the Tandem Press site at tandempress.wisc.edu/events/jazz-series/

Forced into an online-only format by Covid restrictions, UW’s 28 jazz ensemble students, led by jazz ensemble directors Johannes Wallmann, Peter Dominguez, Les Thimmig, and Nick Moran didn’t drop a beat going into the fall semester and immediately got to work making music remotely using students’ computers in their homes and practice spaces to create 45 multi-tracked collaborative ensemble recordings.

The Tandem Press jazz concert series dates back to 2014, and each semester since has featured three performances by UW’s jazz ensemble at Tandem Press’s galleries and production space in Madison’s historic Roundhouse building at 1743 Commercial Avenue. With in-person UW music concerts cancelled for the fall semester, Tandem Press and the jazz program reimagined the concert series and collaborated on this video production which was Covid-safely recorded at the downtown recording studio Audio for the Arts with videography by Microtone Media. Audio engineer Audrey Martinovich and videographer Dave Alcorn also seamlessly integrated interviews as well as musical contributions by students unable to participate in-person due to unanticipated mandatory quarantines and students who were taking fall semester classes remotely.

The video is a virtual recreation of attending a Tandem Press jazz concert where audiences are invited to stroll the galleries and explore the prints created by Tandem Press’s resident artists in between sets of music presented in a quiet listening space. The video features five compositions by students and faculty and showcases the work of Tandem Press artists. In particular, the video celebrates the work of African American artist Derrick Adams, a recent recipient of the New York’s Studio Museum in Harlem’s prestigious $50,000 Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize. Adams’ prints inspired two student compositions by Luke Levitt and Collin Dedrick that are featured on the video.

The musical performances are interspersed with images of prints by Adams, Jeffrey Gibson, Judy Pfaff, and other artists who have worked at Tandem over the past 34 years. Viewers will see Adams’ prints being created in collaboration with our master printers. Tandem curators Sona Pastel Daneshgar and Myszka Lewis will give short talks on the Adams’ images. Audio for the Arts owner Buzz Kemper and Paula Panczenko, director of Tandem Press, welcome the audience, and Johannes Wallmann, UW’s John and Carolyn Peterson Professor of Jazz Studies, describes the program’s purpose and the collaboration which has taken place between both entities over the past six years.

Tandem Press and the UW jazz ensembles will create and release a second video later this spring. Previous in-person Tandem Press jazz concert can be viewed on the Tandem Press YouTube channel.

The Tandem Press concert series and this video collaboration are made possible with generous financial support from the John and Carolyn Peterson Foundation.

PROGRAM

Welcome by Buzz Kemper and Paula Panczenko

Images by Judy Pfaff

“Boy on a Swan Float” (comp: Luke Leavitt), 4:00 minutes

Sona Pastel Daneshgar talks about Boy on a Swan Float.

“The Door” (comp: Sean Lloyd), 7:30 minutes

Suzanne Caporael – The Violet Gaze Series

Johannes Wallmann talks about the Jazz Studies Program and the collaboration with Tandem Press.

“To Party and Plan” (comp: Collin Dedrick), 4:50 minutes

Myszka Lewis talks about Party Guest 1 and Party Guest 2 by Derrick Adams.

Video on Derrick Adams’ prints being made at Tandem Press featuring the master printers Jason Ruhl and Joe Freye.

“Tired of Power” (comp: Luke Leavitt), 9:15 minutes

Images of works by Jeffrey Gibson and Alison Saar

“The Drifting Night” (comp: Les Thimmig), 11:00 minutes

Images of Robert Cottingham, Jim Dine, Carmen Lomas Garza, and Andy Burgess