Aspiring jazz musicians can find it difficult to hone their skills in a real-world setting, since jazz clubs that might sponsor jam sessions have mostly disappeared from America’s downtowns. Our intention in forming the Oswego Jazz Project (OJP) in early fall 2006 was to provide an opportunity for our university students and community members to play jazz with a faculty quartet in a public jam session setting on a weekly basis. The core of the OJP consists of SUNY music professors Rob Auler (piano), Trevor Jorgensen (saxophone), Eric Schmitz (drums), and music alumnus Max McKee (bass). In August 2006, we approached the management at King Arthur’s Steakhouse in downtown Oswego with the idea of holding our jam session there every Wednesday night – they said yes. We’ve been playing there ever since.
In preparation for our weekly gig, we decided to focus on “standards” – that is, time-tested classics from the pens of some of America’s greatest songwriters – George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington, et al. Aside from the immense musical value of these pieces, they constitute a body of work with which jazz musicians are expected to be intimately familiar. In addition, we wanted to include some more recent compositions by noted jazz players (such as Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and Sonny Rollins), which have become standards in their own right.
