Brian Casey Jazz

2023 has been quite a year for me professionally and 2024 promises to hold more opportunities and experiences. Here’s what I’m reflecting on:

In early May of 2023, I successfully defended my dissertation prospectus at the University of Colorado Boulder. The document was defended the working title: A Modern Creole Serenade: Historical and Ethnographic Perspectives of Creole Identity in Jazz. I received incredibly helpful suggestions from all of the committee members, including chair Jay Keister, Carlo Caballero, Reiland Rabaka, Ben Teitelbaum, and Keith Waters. I’m excited to distill my research and thinking on this subject into a document that will contribute to the scholarly discourse around Creole influences with Black American Music, and Creole identity more generally.

In June 2023, my promotion to the rank of Associate Professor of Academic Jazz by the Board of Trustees at the University of Northern Colorado. I ‘d like to thank my colleagues and administration in the School of Music and College of Performing and Visual Arts at UNC for the opportunities that enabled me to achieve this professional milestone. I look forward to serving the University of Northern Colorado for many years to come, and this promotion was a recognition of my being valued by UNC and all of my colleagues here.

Summer of 2023 was full of exciting and transformational experiences. Shortly after submitting grades for Spring 2023 I left Colorado for the last of my funded trips to New Orleans, where I completed my planned oral histories and ethnographic research funded in part by the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at UNC. I was able to spend time interview both John Boutté and Wendell Brunious, as well as spend time with the Brunious family and attend a good deal of live music in the city. After being home in Colorado for 36 hours, I travelled with the UNC Compass Jazz Orchestra and several other UNC faculty for a week-long stay in the Dominican Republic, where the group played multiple times most days, including a concert at the Teatro Nacional in Santo Domingo as part of that venue’s fiftieth anniversary celebration. Home again for another 36 hours and I travelled to Ann Arbor, MI for the 2023 International Society of Bassists conference, where I presented research on oral histories of early New Orleans jazz bassists.

Back to teaching in the Fall of 2023, I resumed my regular load of teaching Undergraduate Jazz History, a graduate seminar I designed called “Post Bop Practices”, based on Keith Waters’s work in that field, Jazz Pedagogy for graduate students while also directing both the Birdland combo and the Bop Shop tune learning experience. During this semester I also had the opportunity to present my research at the College Music Society national conference in Miami on “The First Decades of Jazz”, based on a graduate seminar I designed and teach by the same name. I also served as a mentor for Bailey Hinkley Grogan’s research on African American women in jazz history, which she presented at the conference as well as on a roundtable panel on Radically Responsive Music Schools.

Capping off the year and starting the new year at the Jazz Education Network conference is always a welcome and meaningful way to transition into the new semester, but this conference was extremely special for many reasons. Arguably the most significant way, for me at least, this conference was distinguished from others is the recognition bestowed upon me as the recipient of the 2024 JEN President’s Service Award. Coincidentally, the night that award was presented to me on the main stage of the conference also included UNC’s Compass Jazz Orchestra performing just one hour after I was honored with the award by all attending past presidents of JEN. As an added surprise, I received a last minute call to play bass with the opening group on that program, my new friends from Highline Vocal Jazz. While hard to top that experience with so many of my colleagues and students present, the next day of the conference I co-presented a clinic entitled “The Bop Shop: Teaching Jazz Repertory and Performance Through Aural Models for All Levels” with my colleague and friend Drew Zaremba. At JEN I also was able to present my own original research called “Three of a Kind – Interviews with New Orleans Creole Jazz Musicians Wendell Brunious, Don Vappie, and John Boutté”, preside for Brad Goode’s valuable session “Jazz is NOT a language” and perform in the rhythm section with my friend drummer Steve Barnes in the Vocal Jazz Reading Session.

2023 (and the beginning of 2024) was eventful, exciting, and highly rewarding for me. In 2024 I look forward to continuing my work with the fabulous students and faculty at UNC, completing a good portion of my dissertation, preparing and presenting more research for conferences, and spending some quality time with my wife Kelley, our pets Etta and Teddy and our extended families.

As I wrap up my fifth year at UNC as Assistant Professor of Academic Jazz I wanted to share my current research and announce some upcoming presentations I’m doing:

Most immediately I’m finally defending my PhD Dissertation Prospectus entitled A Modern Creole Serenade: Historical and Ethnographic Perspectives of Creole Identity in Jazz. The defense will be May 4 and is open to the public on Zoom. Email me for the link if you’re interested in attending.

In late May I will be returning to New Orleans to continue research on multiple projects centered around Creole identity and its connection to the development of jazz. I’ll be working with materials in the Hogan Archive of New Orleans Music and New Orleans Jazz, the Amistad Research Center, both at Tulane University, as well as with collections at the New Orleans Jazz Museum and the Historic New Orleans Collection at the Williams Research Center. I also have scheduled oral history and ethnographic interviews with Wendell Brunious, Don Vappie, and John Boutté.

Directly upon my return from New Orleans I’ll have just a few days at home before traveling to the Dominican Republic with UNC’s Jazz Lab Band One where UNC students and faculty will perform and present clinics and workshops for music students in Santo Domingo.

The day after returning from the DR I will head to Ann Arbor, MI to attend and present original research at the International Society of Bassist’s Convention. My research will focus on New Orleans jazz bassists of the early twentieth century based mostly on oral histories from the collections listed above.

The rest of the summer will be focused on completing the dissertation as well as preparing interview transcriptions for publication, as well as preparing for my sixth year of teaching jazz history, jazz pedagogy, and directing jazz ensembles at the University of Northern Colorado.

I’ve also been selected to present research at the College Music Society conference in Miami, Fl in October 2023. I’ll be presenting on new ways of understanding and teaching the precursors of jazz in a work entitled The First Decades of Jazz: Revisiting and Expanding Our Understanding of the Musical, Cultural, and Social Influences on the Development of Jazz into the Early 20th Century.

Whew – I’ve got some work ahead, but I love what I do!

I’ve missed a few activities of note in these blog postings, so here’s both a wrap-up of 2021 and announcements of things in 2022, including activities recently completed or upcoming:

2021:

Oxford Bibliographies Online has published my entry for Miles Davis, with a preview accessible here:

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199757824/obo-9780199757824-0285.xml?rskey=UjSmCk&result=1&q=miles+davis#firstMatch

Jazz Education Network – Poster presentation on Charlie Haden’s improvisatory approaches after 1975

College Music Society – Research presentation focusing on the centenary of Hollywood bassist, composer, and bandleader Harry Babasin

2022:

Jazz Education Network – Poster presentation focusing on current bibliographic resources for Charles Mingus

Upcoming in 2022:

Jazz & Culture will publish a review I wrote for Fatima Shaik’s monograph on Economy Hall

College Music Society – Research presentation focusing on New Orleans Creole musicians who were active in Southern California before 1925

I’ve also been announced as the recipient of a Research Dissemination and Faculty Development grant from the University of Northern Colorado for continued research in New Orleans, with a special focus on doing oral history and ethnographic interviews with New Orleans Creole musicians Wendell Brunious, Don Vappie, and John Boutté.

I’m excited to announce that I’ve been confirmed as a presenter for both the 2021 Jazz Education Network Conference in January and the 2021 International Society of Bassists Convention in Lincoln, NE in June.

The research I’ll be presenting at JEN consists of a poster graphically representing my analysis of Charlie Haden’s use of sequence, pattern and musical rhyme in his solos after 1975. The full title of this research is: Bridging Traditions: A Musico-cultural Analysis of Sequence, Pattern and Musical Rhyme in the Improvised Solos of Charlie Haden After 1975. The poster will be available throughout the virtual conference, but the featured poster time will be midday on January 6, 2020.

My research for ISB centers around the career of West Coast jazz bassist, entrepreneur and composer Harry Babasin in celebration of the centenary of his birth. While Babasin warrants a chapter in John Goldsby’s The Jazz Bass Book, his coverage in general jazz histories is sparse, at best, and I’ve been working with his son to work toward rectifying this oversight. The title of this presentation, scheduled to be presented in person in Lincoln at 4:00p on June 10 is Jazz Bass in Hollywood: Celebrating the Legacy of Bassist and West Coast Jazz Luminary Harry Babasin (1921-1988).

I’m also expecting to see the publication of a major online bibliography for a respected publishing house, a chapter in an online textbook on African American music and a review of the wonderful resource, Rehearsing the Jazz Band by Mary Jo Papich and Ryan Adamsons.

I’ve been off my site for awhile – here’s what’s going on:

My fourth semester as a full-time faculty member at the University of Northern Colorado is well underway. Spring 2020, I’m teaching Jazz Methods and Materials (for music ed majors,) Jazz Program Planning and Administration, Topics in Jazz History (for undergraduate jazz majors,) Graduate Seminar in Jazz History, Jazz Lab Band V (“the Bop Shop”) and directing the Birdland combo. I’m constantly impressed and inspired by my colleagues, students and the community that surrounds the UNC School of Music and Jazz Studies program.

I’ve got gigs booked this winter and spring in Colorado with Andy Weyl and Holly DeHoog, Keith Waters, Bob Harris and the Bringers of Swing, and a gig at the Biamp/PDX Jazz Festival in Oregon with Anson Wright. While in Oregon, I’ll present a guest lecture at PSU and work with the jazz band at Pacific University.

Since the start of the 2019-2020 academic year, I’ve had the privilege of sitting on a panel on the undergraduate music major at the College Music Society national conference as well as presenting a research poster at the 11th Annual Jazz Education Network conference. I also recently published an article on the historiography of modern jazz in the inaugural issue of Jazz Education in Practice and Performance, through JEN and Indiana University Press.

My research is in full swing, working on two projects for upcoming publication as well as configuring the dissertation prospectus for my PhD in musicology. I’m compiling a 75-100 entry online bibliography for a major academic publisher as well as a chapter for an online textbook on African American musical traditions. My dissertation prospectus centers of theories of creolization and how creole identity has shaped the development of jazz in New Orleans.

I look forward to a fully engaged 2020. Return to this space for more on my work in jazz research, education and performance as time allows.

BC