Cabaret Jazzes Up Center for the Arts

Author: Venessa Wong

Maryleen Emeric '03 opened last Wednesday's Jazz Cabaret with an animated rendition of "Teach Me Tonight," captivating the attention of an intimate audience seated around candlelit tables by Rehearsals CafÈ.
Emeric was one of eight performers at the event. The calm, cultured atmosphere their voices generated transformed the Center for the Arts into the perfect venue for lovers of late night jazz.
The other performers were Padma Govindan '05, Alexander Rossmiller '04, exchange student Lucie Greene, Retta Leaphart '06, Yigit Irde '05 on drums, Christopher Lizotte '06 on sax, Colin Meltzer '05 on sax, and alumnis Jeff Vallone on bass. They experimented both playfully and proficiently in genres ranging from ballads to blues.
The musicians all acted with an air of casualness and individuality, incorporating gesture and expression into their pieces and offering a fresh perspective on musical performance, which often suffer an overstaged, artificial and stiff texture.
Says Govindan, who's upbeat delivery of "I Can't Take You Nowhere" sent the audience into a head-bopping, toe-tapping whirl, "Jazz is by nature fluid, and requires a lot of imagination. This is not to say that classical music does not require the same level of creativity and demand innovation, particularly with regards to interpretation, but that demand is very different in nature from jazz."
"My favorite thing about jazz is the feeling I get every time I sing," says Emeric. "No matter whatever else is going on my life or how much I have to do, when I am singing jazz and concentrating on the aesthetic beauty of creating my own music - all the other stuff just melts away!"
The Cabaret was a means of collaboratively showcasing the talents the students generated over the semester through private lessons with Dick Forman, a member of the Music Department's Applied Faculty.
"It's important for people who study the performing arts to have a chance to perform. Jazz in the practice room is only a hint of what can be created with a band in front of an audience."
Greene, who is studying at the College on exchange from England, says, "My only outlet [in England] was getting up in jazz bars occasionally and singing a number or two, so when I came to Middlebury on exchange and saw there were lessons I jumped at the chance. There isn't really much in England in the way of Jazz education, or opportunities to sing Jazz unless you commit entirely to a Music Degree. I think a lot of good singers don't end up doing it because there is so little opportunity."
The performances were an impressive displayed these musicians' command of technique and musical freedom and offered a revitalizing vibe to Middlebury College arts.