Jazz voice students, studying under University of Rhode Island professor Atla DeChamplain, accompanied the URI Standard Combo in the second Jazz Combo event of the semester on March 4.
The voice students were asked to sing at the combo, according to DeChamplain. It was short notice, so students only knew they were going to be on stage two weeks prior. However, they had been practicing the repertoire since the first week of the semester.
There were six students who performed at the combo, accompanied by URI Professor Emeritus Joseph Parillo. Each song had different tempos, tones and emotion. “My Romance,” sung by second-year Liz O’Connor, was slow and sultry with a crescendo.
“Lullaby of Birdland,” sung by fourth-year Ricki Rizzo, is a ballad with ska and continued with jaunty lyrics. She often sings the song when she performs at gigs in the Helmway in Middletown, Rhode Island, she said. The tempo was moderate, with emotions of happiness.
Some voice students highlighted female composers in jazz music, according to fourth-year Louis Shriber. His song was “Twisted” by Annie Ross, which is a bebop classic. Unlike the sultry songs, “Twisted” had an upbeat tempo and charismatic emotion.
After each student performed their pieces, the URI Standards Combo came out to play three Charles Mingus songs and one Burt Bacharach song. The pieces by Mingus were all fast but unified as one voice.
One Mingus piece was “Better Get Hit in Your Soul,” performed at the end of the set. The piece featured unified clapping from each member at the start before diving into a consistently fast beat from the beginning to the end.
Unlike the Mingus pieces, Bacharach’s song “Alfie” was soft in tempo but powerful in tone.
In addition to singing “My Romance,” O’Connor sang “The Other Woman.” She began practicing “The Other Woman” last semester, and worked on “My Romance” since the start of this semester. She chose the songs because they show a wide range of motion and are beautiful in different ways.
“I chose [“The Other Woman”] because I’m overly inspired by Nina Simone’s version,” O’Connor said. “[DeChamplain] picked [“My Romance,”] and it resonated with me.”
Rizzo and Shriber were the first two jazz vocalists at URI, according to Rizzo. They’ve been performing together since their second year.
“We were really pioneering the program with [DeChamplain],” Rizzo said. “So it’s bittersweet that we’re finishing it up.”
David Zinno, the director of the combo, picked the repertoire to elevate the members’ skills as musicians to another level, according to Rizzo. The hardest piece for Rizzo and Shriber to perform was “Boogie Stop Shuffle” because it’s technical and fast at first. Getting the articulation right while singing the song was a challenge, Rizzo said.
“When you do understand it, it’s a lot of muscle memory,” Shriber said.
Rizzo said her favorite songs to perform in the combo were “Boogie Stop Shuffle” and “Alfie,” and that she loves challenges and performing them with Shriber.
The repertoire for each student is based on what goals they have as a vocalist, according to DeChamplain. Sometimes, a student has something specific they want to work on, and they pick half of the repertoire while DeChamplain picks the other half. She targets songs that will improve her students’ voice.
“[The pieces I choose] are all hard because I think most music — to do it correctly, to do well and convincingly, even songs that are really simple to do —is hard to execute,” DeChamplain said.
To keep up with upcoming music department performances, visit URI’s events calendar online.
