| New York Voices (from left) Lauren Kinhan, Darmon Meader, Peter Eldridge and Kim Nazarian, will teach and perform during a vocal jazz camp next week on the Bowling Green State University campus. (Photo courtesy of New York Voices) |
A week of vocal jazz is on tap for Bowling Green State University starting Monday and continuing through
Aug. 6.
For the third year, the Grammy-winning jazz vocal ensemble the New York Voices will camp out on campus,
and offer training for more than 60 students. The New York Voices Vocal Jazz Camp also presents concerts
each night featuring both the Voices, both as soloists and together, and the students as well as BGSU’s
own jazz faculty.
The Voices had long discussed doing a summer camp, said member Peter Eldridge. It was Kim Nazarian who is
a guest artist at the BGSU College of Musical Arts, who suggested BGSU.
The camp brings the singers, who also include Darmon Meader, a singer and tenor saxophonist, and Lauren
Kinhan, as well as performer, educator, conductor and arranger Greg Jasperse to BGSU.
The arrangement has worked out very well, said Eldridge. The facilities, he said, are first rate, and
"it’s really great having the guys in the band," referring to the jazz faculty rhythm section
of guitarist Chris Buzzelli, bassist Jeff Halsey and drummer Roger Schupp.
The singers themselves are a varied lot ranging in age from 15 years old to over 60. In the previous
camps, singers have attended from Japan, South Africa and France, and Eldridge expects an international
presence again this year.
That variety is important to the Voices.
"It’s always part of our mission to keep this music alive and breathing," Eldridge said.
For the younger students the camp lets them hear jazz, "a music they may not have had a chance to
check out."
The teachers in the student body help to disseminate the Voices’ lessons to their choirs and communities.
The older singers, he said, may now be acting on a musical urge they’ve long harbored.
Singers are taught both in individual lessons, focusing on technique and interpretation, in ensembles of
a dozen or so singers, and then for a few songs with everyone in a large choir directed by Jasperse.
Student talents will be showcased in two of the concerts.
Other concerts will feature the New York Voices as soloists and duets with the culminating event a
concert Aug. 6 featuring the New York Voices.
The opening concert Monday will feature the BGSU Jazz Singers and singer Morgen Stiegler with Buzzelli.
