The Saskatoon Jazz Orchestra and Guests, featuring Ross Ulmer, will be completing a three stop-tour in North Battleford Sunday afternoon.
Trombonist Ross Ulmer says the Friends Remembered tour was meant to be. "With the February tour my goal is recreate the excitement for the audience that I felt when I first fell in love with big band jazz."
Ulmer, formerly of North Battleford, now an auto dealership owner in Lloydminster, has been involved in music since his days with the North Battleford City Kinsmen Band.
"In my formative years I had incredible guidance from my first band leader, Norm Lehman, and was given a free hand at the University of Saskatchewan to pursue interests in dance band and jazz ensemble even though formal instruction was not available," he says.
He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Saskatchewan and a master's of music in trombone from North Texas State University.
"Until I was 19, the only jazz I ever heard was a couple of Tommy Dorsey albums of my dad's," says Ulmer.
He was introduced to the thrill of live jazz in 1972 at the Saskatchewan Summer School of the Arts, which had brought in national faculty for a week long clinic, including names such as world famous trombonist Phil Wilson (who would become a mentor and sometime instructor to Ulmer), Lyle Mays, Lou Marini, John LaPorta, Wes Hensel, Rich Matteson (a prime influence on his attending North Texas State University) and Ashley Alexander.
"On the first night the staff put on a concert – well from the first note of that concert to the last – my leg wouldn't quit moving (not my foot, my whole leg!) – and the smile didn't leave my face as I was literally thrilled with the music, the soloist, the beat, the sound – it was tremendous," says Ulmer.
Later, he had the chance to play in the staff band at the Saskatchewan Summer School of the Arts as a teacher himself. He had the pleasure of playing a big band concert every night with some of the best professional musicians and educators in North America.
"It was thrilling and powerful," says Ulmer.
He hopes the Friends Remembered concert will give students and adults an opportunity to "feel a little bit of that thrill."
Ulmer says the concert is of particular interest to anyone who currently plays or has ever played in a band program. He adds the musicians will also be providing free master class workshops in the morning of the concert for interested band members of the North Battleford school system. This week. Ulmer said they've had response from local teachers that they will be using all the clinicians, so he is happy about that.
He also believes every instrumentalist will benefit from the concert by a group of musicians who he says surpass any he's performed with in Saskatchewan since returning to the province in 1980.
"It is so good I believe every instrumentalist should hear the group – like me, it may be the reason students end up with a lifelong passion for music," says Ulmer.
The idea for the tour was born within a week of playing a concert last year with the Saskatoon Jazz Orchestra. The theme of Friends Remembered was inspired by introducing a tune he dedicated to a friend who had passed away. Frank Mantooth, the Kansas pianist, composer, arranger, clinician, author and educator, had arranged the piece for another of Ulmer's friends who had also passed away, trombonist Ashley Alexander. (The Utah born musician died while teaching at the Summer School of the Arts Fort Qu'Appelle campus in 1988.)
Included in the musical lineup for the Friends Remembered Tour is a "rollicking fun and humorous" tune called Colonel Corn, written by Phil Wilson, that was played often when Ulmer was teaching at summer jazz camps in the late 1970s and ‘80s. It's no longer in print, so Ulmer emailed Wilson, who teaches at Berklee College of Music in Boston, wanting to buy a copy.
"Within two weeks," says Ulmer, "he had sent me a copy, free of charge!"
It's one of the reasons Ulmer thinks this concert was meant to be.
Another is the response he got from an arranger he knows from his two years of playing with the RCMP Band in Ottawa when he asked if he could rework an arrangement of his for jazz ensemble.
"The answer was yes at a price so ridiculously low it was practically free," says Ulmer. "This concert is mean to be!
Members of the band include:
Brad Shigeta, who has toured the world as lead trombone and soloist with the Duke Ellington Orchestra under Mercer Ellington's lead;
Ray Vasquez, professor of trumpet at Auburn University, Alabama, who is in demand around the world, having done clinics from Bangok, Thailand to Minneapolis, Minnesota;
Dean McNeil, professor of music at the U of S and founder of the Saskatoon Jazz Orchestra;
Jim Brenan, an exciting tenor sax player who has released numerous solo recordings;
Paul Read, pianist and saxophonist recently retired as professor of music at the University of Toronto;
Sheldon Corbett, a tenor sax player who makes his living as a professional musician in Saskatoon – and father of one of the Juno Award-winning Sheep Dogs; and
Jon McCaslin, who studied at McGill University and the University of Toronto;
Ulmer says the band also includes Barrie Redford, Dawn McLean-Belyk, Don Schmidt and Doug Gilmour "who are all personal friends from Saskatoon and each a fantastic player."
Friends Remembered will be presented Friday in Saskatoon at 7:30 p.m. at the Broadway Theatre, at the Vic Juba Theatre in Lloydminster Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and at the Dekker Centre in North Battleford at 2:30 p.m.
