John Hollenbeck, Jean-Michel Pilc will join McGill University's jazz faculty this fall
Two brilliant New York-based jazz musicians and educators will join -- and quite possibly shake up -- McGill University's jazz faculty in the fall.
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That’s the huge news from Remi Bolduc on Facebook. The McGill jazz department chair and ace Montreal saxophonist wrote:
“I am happy to announce that both John Hollenbeck and Jean-Michel Pilc will join the Schulich School of Music’s Jazz Faculty starting in August 2015.
John Hollenbeck
Composer/percussionist and four-time Grammy nominee John Hollenbeck is renowned in both the jazz and new-music worlds. He has gained widespread recognition as the driving force behindthe unclassifiable Claudia Quintet and the ambitious John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, groups with roots in jazz, world music, and contemporary composition. He is well known in new-music circles for his longtime collaboration with Meredith Monk and has worked with many of the world’s leading musicians in jazz including Bob Brookmeyer, Fred Hersch, and Tony Malaby. John is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the ASCAP Jazz Vanguard Award, and a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. His most notable works include commissions by Bang on a Can All-Stars, Ethos Percussion Group, Youngstown State University, Melbourne Jazz Festival,University of Rochester, Ensemble Cairn of France, Orchestre National de Jazz, and Frankfurt Radio Big Band. Since 2005, he was a professor of Jazz Drums and Improvisation at the Jazz Institute Berlin.
Jean-Michel Pilc
Since 2006, Pilc was a NYU Steinhardt faculty member. He was also co-director of NYU Summer Jazz Improv Workshop in 2010. Jean-Michel was also teaching for the New School in NYC, as well as privately.
Jean-Michel Pilc originally from Paris, moved to New York City in 1995. There, he formed a trio with François Moutin (bass) and Ari Hoenig (drums). They recorded a one-week engagement at the legendary jazz club Sweet Basil and, in 2000, released two CDs: Jean-Michel Pilc Trio – Together – Live at Sweet Basil, NYC – Vol. 1 & 2 (A- Records).Pilc has recently released a book, It’s About Music – The Art and Heart of Improvisation (Glen Lyon Books) and an educational video for all instruments, True Jazz Improvisation (JazzHeaven). Another video about piano playing and practicing is in the works.”
Congratulations to Hollenbeck, Pilc (who last performed in Ottawa at the Ottawa Winter Jazz Festival in February) and McGill. It will be fascinating to see what impact these two profound musicians and educators have at the school. They join trumpeters Kevin Dean and Joe Sullivan and drummer/pianist Andre White on faculty.
Hollenbeck and Pilc applied to fill one faculty position for either a pianist or a drummer, after it became vacant following the untimely passing last summer of pianist Jan Jarczyk. Clearly McGill’s music school must have thought that both applicants will bring tremendous value to the program. I would expect the internationally known musicians to increase the already considerable draw that McGill’s jazz program exerts when it comes to attracting students. Plus, both have strikingly different approaches to jazz pedagogy, and are bristling, even iconoclastic artists.
Since the late 1980s (when I spent a few years playing in jazz combos there), McGill has developed a reputation as a solid jazz school with established professors such as Kevin Dean and Andre White who stressed bebop and hard bop as fundamental materials for would-be jazz musicians. Many of their students, from Joel Miller and Christine Jensen to Dave Laing and Alec Walkington teach there.
I’ll be keen to chat with Pilc and Hollenbeck once they’ve settled in as McGill faculty in Montreal. I spoke to Pilc at length several years ago, and the Paris-raised musician spoke of the move that he had made to New York in the mid-1990s: “I was starting from scratch. I was resetting myself, you know, and I love that feeling. I think it’s a great feeling for an artist, or for a human being in general, to be put back almost to zero and have to rediscover everything in another way. I love that.”
Hollenbeck and Pilc are not the only American jazz musicians who left New York to teach in Canada — perhaps most notably, the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg boasts such jazz faculty as bassist Steve Kirby, trumpeter Derrick Gardner and drummer Quincy Davis.
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