Word: jazzed
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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This moving stage memoir chronicles the life of Gene Glimmer (Christopher R. Starr ’03), a talented jazz trumpeter who never quite made it. He is a “side man,” a journeyman musician in the heyday of the big band who plays backup to the headline stars. His story serves as a eulogy for the jazz era which faded with the onset of rock ‘n’ roll. On a more intimate level, Side Man also explores the way that Gene’s passion for jazz rules and ultimately...
...sound designer, Amanda Rigas ’05, but although music is the conceptual basis of the play, Kanter is quick to explain that “it’s no musical.” In rehearsal he sits with a portable stereo playing excerpts from jazz classics interspersed at key points in the action. It’s the first time the actors have heard the complete soundtrack and the response is resoundingly positive. Someone remarks it is “very moving” to have both a “visual dramatic and audio sensory experience?...
Kanter is loathe, however, to make the audience feel like it is “at a concert,” so there is only one point where the action stops completely and the cast of characters—a motley crew of jazz club musicians—stop and listen to a particularly integral song. This moment at the climax of the play “shows what the music means to the group,” explains Kanter, echoing Clifford’s final musing in the play on the lives of the side...
...pleasing seepage from art to life, the actors enthusiastically plan a group outing to a jazz club one Friday during a break in rehearsal. As the music fades from the tinny portable boom box at the end of a particularly exhilarating run-through, Starr exclaims: “Let’s all go listen to jazz!” It sounds like a perfect plan...
...crowd, which had been waiting with a sense of confident anticipation, was comprised of volunteers, party activists and state party politicos, all grooving to the “New Liberty” Dixie land jazz band. Donning boaters and red vests, the band’s youngest member was a spry...