Things are wrapping up here at the Shell Lake Jazz Combo Camp. It’s been a fantastic week. The faculty were all top notch players from Minneapolis, Chicago, Indiana and Madison. There was one faculty per instrument and we gave three concerts as a group throughout the week. (The piano faculty was Luke Gillespie from Indiana U and is absolutely brilliant!) The faculty combo was joined by jazz violinist, Randy Sabien on our last two concerts as well. We all had a great time working together. I hope to keep these musical relationships an ongoing thing.
There were six combos that were taught by each one of us. We all also held daily master classes as well as improvisation classes. I had to do mostly scale work in the two classes I taught as that was lacking in most of the students up here. They all had great attitudes and work ethics but the fundamentals weren’t as strong as I had hoped. Hopefully this group will return and we can pick up were we left off.
This camp gave me a great overall feeling for the future of jazz. There does seem to be some young people out there that actually care about this art form!