Back to Northern Illinois Univ. Jazz Ensemble with 1982's Reflections of You

In the past I posted Space Train and Magic Carpet Ride from these guys.  This was almost 8 years ago--!

Full details for this release can be found here.  Not the best cover artwork this time.

In distinction to the NTSU guys this band is more jazzy but occasionally has some progressive composition.  Probably the best is by Mark Bettcher, called Driftangle:

The Northern Illinois University Jazz Ensemble Part 2: Space Train, from 1978

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Now for the other album I have from this talented group of hard-blowing college students.  It's a very enjoyable big band set with some tasty concoctions, and this time, there is one African-American face in the crowd when you look at the back.  So it was clear that the tide was turning in the USA, that an artform entirely created by black people in the early 20th century, mastered by them, perfected and mostly played by them, could now be played in public by one solitary black individual in a white band numbering in the hundreds-- really, social progress is quite blindingly fast sometimes.

The apple-cheeked Dizzy Gillespie (he's always referred to in that way btw, it's mandatory, by law in the US) does a kind of cameo too writing the liner notes.  The sad-looking Marlena Dietrich-like female on the back is the singer Lisa Zakrajsek who doesn't seem to have done much afterwards not surprisingly and her voice leaves a little to be desired, as in the singing.  She was more the artsy type I suppose than the perky blonde with Farrah Fawcett hair whose picture graced the "Magic Carpet Ride" album (see here) and on whom everyone probably had a crush on.  Perhaps in those days in the late seventies they even had the opportunity to have intercourse with her, possibly even all at the same time, or so I understand was the case oftentimes in those days.  Sure hope the black dude got his chance too.

The title track is a very impressive composition and chart, presumably by one of the students, Tim Crawford.  Full information here.  Altogether a nice effort and worth listening to a few times.  Recall that in their next album they appeared Live in Montreux, which I might in a future moment of weakness (psychiatric that is) purchase, and subsequently recall came the pathetically titled "Jazz Lives" (though at the time it must have seemed appropriate enough).  As I said before the customary summer jazz festival in my town every year becomes more geriatrically oriented, despite the young and beautiful females they keep inviting to perform the same stupid old standards played millions of times before, with, in the last year, mandatory defibrillators placed at every tableside next to the antacids (during a lightning storm I understand one oldster actually recovered from a cardiac arrest when he was struck).  Like on transatlantic flights, each attendee was offered their own hearing aid which came in handy when the microphones failed on the first set -- though this didn't stop several white-haired grandpas and grandmas with clown-like red lipstick from dancing in the aisles whilst still in their electric scooters -- the kind with the old grocery bags hanging from the front baskets.  At that time I was almost run over by one handicapped 80-year old whom I cursed only to realize he was once one of the jazz greats whose name was on the marquee, and whose albums I had once collected when in university!  Not only did he autograph one record for me, he threw it in my face and cut my lip.  Life is plenty ironic, without having to get into the issue of reality TV stars....

Now here's the Northern Illinois University Jazz Ensemble performing their Space Train:

Northern Illinois Jazz Ensemble Part 1: Magic Carpet Ride (USA, 1977)

From the Northern Illinois University (located in DeKalb, Illinois) website:

With a roster that includes students from Miami to Milwaukee, the NIU Jazz Ensemble has long been considered one of the best college jazz bands in the world. The ensemble performed at the 54th annual Midwest Music Clinic in Chicago with saxophonist Jimmy Heath as the guest artist, and at the 28th annual International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE) Conference in New York with trumpeter Wynton Marsalis as the guest artist. During the summer of 2001 the band performed at the North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands, at the Jazz à  Vienne Festival in France, and at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. The list of guest artists with whom the ensemble has performed includes Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Bellson, Clark Terry, Tito Puente and James Moody, just to name a few. In the summer of 1996 the NIU Jazz Ensemble performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland as Quincy Jones’s big band with guest artists Phil Collins, Patti Austin, David Sanborn, Gerald Albright, Chaka Kahn, Toots Theilman and James Morrison. 

Very impressive.   Moreover If you look at their discography they put out quite a few albums.  I have only two of them, this one and the next called Space Train which will be up next.  Please note the 1985 album sadly entitled "Jazz Lives" which, every year that passes, becomes more mordantly pathetic, especially when I make the mistake of attending our local yearly summer jazz festival and, surrounded by grey-haired overweight men in ridiculous goatees and Tilley hats with their hunchbacked wives attempting to dance around in circles whenever they play an old Benny Goodman song that has been played millions of times before without falling and breaking their hips, I realize this art-form is slowly dying due to a total lack of creativity.

Looking at the back I was surprised to see no African-American faces at all in this jazz band, despite their credit for creating this style of music.  Well I better leave that area alone.  Moving on to the music, there are a couple of interesting (read progressive) tracks, I'll sample my favourite which is the title track, Magic Carpet Ride.





 I will post the other album that I have from them, Space Train, this coming week.