Jazz band member Buster Scheuer '20 during the group's March performance.

Jazz Band Covers “Blue” Album

6/5/2020

This spring, Jazz Band found an innovative way to make music together while apart.

During remote learning, the upper school musicians recorded a selection of songs from iconic singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell’s fourth studio album, “Blue.”

Department of Performing Arts faculty member Gilles Pugatch shared that he “wanted to maintain our spring focus on collaborating on a master work,” and so, beginning in April, the group embarked on the monumental task of recording the songs remotely.

“What the students were able to do is remarkable,” Pugatch said, especially considering the various difficulties that the group members encountered during the recording process. Students overcame technical difficulties and even a lack of access to instruments in order to complete the project. One band member, Garrett Wenberg ’20, even used his bed as an instrument on the track “My Old Man.”

“Our north star in the jazz band is creative collaboration,” Pugatch explained. “While we had a completely new set of circumstances, we were able to maintain that guiding principle.” The music teacher is also proud of the fact that this culminating piece of work will live on the internet in perpetuity, “reminding [the students] of a time when, given really, really scary and odd circumstances, they were able to come out on the other side.”