Jazz Ensembles
Ray Anderson, Director
ray.anderson@stonybrook.edu
Thomas Manuel, Endowed Artist in ResidenceÂ
thomas.manuel@stonybrook.edu
About
The Stony Brook Jazz program is led by Ray Anderson, chosen five times as “Best Trombonist”
in Downbeat Magazine’s Critics Poll. Ray conducts The SBU Jazz Orchestra, Stony Brook’s
big band and supervises the small ensembles along with talented graduate assistants.
Thomas Manuel, Director of the Jazz Loft in Stony Brook, performs in The SBU Jazz
Orchestra and assists in the administration of the jazz program.
The SBU Jazz Orchestra plays a wide variety of big band music, covering the entire
scope of jazz history and reaching into the future. Classic compositions of Duke Ellington,
Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, Thad Jones and others are featured next to more modern
works, including compositions by Stony Brook students and Ray Anderson. Undergraduates,
graduates, and musicians from the local community, often including Stony Brook faculty
from different departments, play together. The band is known for its precision and
blend, as well as individual creativity. In that regard, the band is a living, evolving
entity, exploring the essential and lively tension between composition and improvisation.
The Jazz Combos include everyone from beginning undergraduates to virtuoso jazz players,
with every level in between. The advanced groups play highly original compositions
and arrangements by members of the group, the less advanced focus on standards of
the jazz repertoire, but always with a focus on originality. As with the big band,
the focus is on both the group's sound as a band, i.e. how we play together, and the
individual's creativity, i.e. how we tell our own story.
Meeting Times
Jazz Big Band Ensemble - MUS 264
Monday Evenings
Jazz Combos - MUS 267 (Tuesday evenings) or MUS 289 (Wednesday evenings)
Beginning Improvisation - MUS 189 (Wednesday evenings)
JAZZ AUDITIONS
Everyone is welcome to register for the classes but you must audition to participate.
Sign up for an audition time on the sheets will be posted outside the Music Office
(3304, Music Building, Staller Center). Thursday and Friday, Jan. 26 and 27, 2023
SMALL JAZZ COMBOS
As much as possible, this course will be run just like a rehearsal for a band performance.Â
We will be covering a wide range of music with an emphasis on the interplay between
the group and the individual. Knowledge of the music’s history and an understanding
of the African-American culture that gave birth to Jazz, is essential to understanding
the music, and to that end there will be some assigned reading.
LARGE JAZZ ENSEMBLE (THE SBU Jazz Orchestra)
As much as possible, this course will be run just like a rehearsal for a band performance.Â
We will be covering a wide range of music. Primary emphases are on section and whole
band blend and sound, as well as individual creativity and expression inside of the
group. We will be exploring the essential jazz tension between composition and improvisation.
We have a concert at the end of each semester.Â
MUS 189 BEGINNING JAZZ IMPROVISATION
In this course you will learn to play jazz by practicing daily on your instrument
and playing in class. Harmony, melody, phrasing, rhythm and the study of the African-American
roots of jazz will be included.