On Monday, November 25, 2013, I went to a jazz performance called "A Jazz Combo Showcase." It was" presented by the UCLA Herb Albert School of Music, Department of Ethnomusicology. The performance took place at Schoenberg Fall at 7:00pm. It featured student combo ensembles directed by Kenny Burrell, George Bohanon, Clayton Cameron, Charley Harrison, Charles Owens, and Michele Weir, as well as special guests, the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance Ensemble. Most of the audience consisted of friends and family members of the performers, or students who came to watch the performance for extra credit, like myself. The performance was free admission, so people could come and go as they pleased. Although this performance occurred the Monday before Thanksgiving, there was no special occasion for this performance other than it being a showcase for student jazz musicians. .
The performance was opened by Jazz Combo Seven (directed by Michele Weir), which consisted of a piano, trumpet, saxophone, drum, and bass. They performed a musical piece called "November 15th, " followed by another piece that was composed and arranged by them. The first song was pretty soft, and each instrument had a solo. The audience applauded each musician after they were done with their solo. The musicians didn't seem to interact with each other very much, and they all looked a bit bored when someone else was performing their solo. For an opening, the performance was fairly long, mostly due to the fact that each musician had a long solo.
After the opening, the Jazz Vocal Combo One came up to the stage to perform. As stated in the name of the combo, this group consisted of students who are jazz vocalists. The students comprising this group did not come up to the stage together though "a pair or a smaller group within that combo came to the stage to perform their respective songs. The musicians from Jazz Combo Seven stayed on the stage to accompany the singers by providing the instrumental background music.
According to Ingrid Byerly, a former professor of ethnomusicology at Duke University, music, "served the purpose of mobilizing social change, whether with the more concrete intentions of invoking peace or threatening war, or with the more abstract intentions of recovering or reflecting a past, suggesting or establishing a present, and projecting or prophesying a future."" ...