Jazz Is Now!

As an educational affiliate of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Jazz is NOW! shares similar programming goals with JLC, including Jazz Is for Everyone! classes and educational workshops, in addition to the orchestra. In March 2003, Jeremy Walker formed an Artistic Advisory Board that includes jazz masters Wynton Marsalis of JLC, Victor Goines from Julliard, and Ted Nash from the Jazz Composers Collective; Goines and Nash have been members of JLC as well. In addition to the orchestra, the JIN organization includes the Jazz Is NOW! Composers' Ensembles, ranging from trio to sextet. Formed to explore a particular sound or idea as well as bring the JIN music to smaller venues, these ensembles are specific projects with varying personnel. Past ensembles have included a piano-less quartet with alto, tenor, bass and drums, and a traditional quartet with saxophone and rhythm section.

Jazz Is NOW! Orchestra

The nine-piece Jazz is NOW! Orchestra, the brainchild of founder and Artistic Director Jeremy Walker, swings with the spirit of the historic territory bands of the 1930s and the creative intensity of the groups of Charles Mingus. Already recognized for their free and energetic sound, JIN is winning new fans of big bands. Todd Reynolds, renowned violinist with Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project and former concertmaster of Marcus Roberts' Gershwin Orchestra, called his guest performance this January with Jazz is NOW! as "one of the best nights of music in [my] life." Recently the band was named recipient of a 2005 Jerome Foundation Centennial Grant for the commissioning of new works.

The JIN personnel include a Who's Who among Twin Cities' jazz artists, each with a solid reputation in his own right: Anthony Cox (bass), Peter Schimke (piano), Kevin Washington (drums), Kelly Rossum (trumpet), Matt Darling (trombone), Scott Fultz (tenor saxophone), Chris Thomson (tenor and soprano saxophones, Music Director), and Jeremy Walker (alto saxophone, Artistic Director).

Anthony Cox has an international reputation as a versatile and creative bassist, equally at home in straight-ahead acoustic settings and avant garde electronic experiments. Rooted in the Midwest, Cox spent professionally formative years in New York and on the international touring circuit, playing and/or recording with Elvin Jones, James Newton, David Murray, Henry Threadgill, Arthure Blythe, Jon Faddis, Sam Rivers, Dewey Redman, Joe Lovano, John Scofield, and Geri Allan, among many others. In addition to private instruction, Cox has taught at MusicTech and Anoka-Ramsey Community College as well as a long list of local, national, and international residencies, public school projects, and workshops. His skills as a composer can be heard on his recordings, such as Dark Metals with Billy Higgins and Dewey Redman. These days, with local and regional bands, including the Grismore Scea Group, he plays with "a deep, burnished quality, and...adapts to the varied compositional demands with suppleness and conviction" (Artists Direct).

Peter Schimke is one of the busiest keyboard talents in the Twin Cities today, appearing frequently at the Artists Quarter, Dakota, and just about anywhere else that requires first class comping and soloing on piano or Fender Rhodes. Notes Don Berryman (Jazz Police), "When he is comping behind a soloist, he is engaged in a subtle dialogue, listening and responding with harmonies and rhythms that sometimes represent a suggestion or even a challenge to the soloist." And when he takes off in a leading role, Schimke blazes new trails and challenges others to keep up. In addition to JIN and his own ensembles, Schimke is a member of the edgy quartet, How Birds Work.

Kevin Washington is a native of Detroit and son of saxophonist Donald and flautist Faye Washington. A musical prodigy, he started playing at jazz festivals at age 5, and moved to the Twin Cities with his family at age 13. As a jazz student at the New School for Social Research in New York, he also taught rhythm section fundamentals at the Harlem School of the Arts. Washington, not yet thirty, has performed with Roscoe Mitchell, Antonio Hart, Chico Freeman, James Carter, Marcus Belgrave, David Murray Big Band, Fred Ho, Craig Taborn, and James Newton, among others. Home in Minneapolis, he mans the trapset with such artists as Doug Little, Alicia Wiley, Bruce Henry, Anthony Cox, and Moveable Feast, and has been an instructor with the Twin Cities Jazz Workshop.

Kelly Rossum studied classical trumpet at the University of North Texas, and now teaches through the MacPhail Center for Music. Living in Minneapolis since 1996, Rossum performs both jazz and classical music, having worked with the Lyra Consort as well as with a wide range of local jazz artists. His second recording, Renovation, was nominated for four Minnesota Music Awards; was included in the top 20 local albums for 2004 by the Minneapolis Star Tribune; and was one of City Pages' top 10 local albums of the year.