USC student enseble performs at Music School
The Left Bank Big Band cooled and smoothed the School of Music recital hall Thursday night with a jazz concert.
The bebop band, composed of graduate and undergraduate students led by jazz studies director Bert Ligon, spat out tunes from “Basically Blues,” to “Backbone” and other Dixieland music with the flute, bass, guitar, drums, vibraphone, trumpets, trombones and saxophones and a piano.
“They’re excellent,” said Lotte Chakowski of Columbia.
Chakowski, a math teacher, originally thought little of music but was compelled to change her tempo.
“I realized it takes a lot of work,” said Chakowski, who has been a music fan for the last eight years.
Now she enjoys the music from the likes of the Left Bank Big Band.
“They’re so uplifting and talented,” Chakowski said.
However, not everyone shared her view. Sherri Cafaro of Columbia didn’t hesitate to haze the band from top to bottom.
“They’re lazy, spoiled, unambitious and not listening to the right people,” she said. “You have to go to the core of jazz — Ella Fitzgerald, Count Bassie.”
Cafaro squirmed in uneasy disapproval whenever the band was off key, which was seldom. The fast, focused rhythms combined with occasional solos, such as fourth-year music student Mandy Lischner’s flute playing, motivated the audience members — including Cafaro — to add their own soundtrack with applause.