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Composer Joseph Phillips 'jazzes up' St. Olaf this week

By David Gonnerman '90
November 18, 2005

Joseph Phillips, a professional composer from New York City, is visiting St. Olaf this week to work with St. Olaf students and to help introduce the new piece he composed for the St. Olaf jazz program. Phillips' new composition is the first ever commissioned by the award-winning St. Olaf jazz program. The work will premiere in a Jazz I ensemble performance Friday, Nov. 18, at 8:15 p.m. in the Pause, Buntrock Commons.

Related performances this week include the percussion ensemble -- and the college's new Taiko Club -- Thursday at 8:15 p.m. in Urness Recital Hall and two more jazz ensembles Sunday at 7 p.m. in the Pause. All performances are free and open to the public.

St. Olaf Artist in Residence David Hagedorn says Phillips' jazz "sparkles and grooves." The end result is a unique hybrid, explains Hagedorn, because Phillips "combines the African American tradition of the big band style of Duke Ellington and Count Basie with the minimialist classical compostitional style of John Adams and Count Basie."

Influenced by contemporary 'classical' composers as well as by jazz, rock, pop and film composers, Phillips' compositions fuse these styles into an excitingly beautiful soundscape that hopes to challenge listeners and, as he says, "to stimulate and refresh the spirit." His music has been praised by Grammy-nominated composers Maria Schneider, Jim McNeely, Mike Abene and Manny Albam.

Phillips has been a composer and performer with Seattle's Young Composer's Collective and the No Standards Jazz Orchestra. He is resident composer for the Maffei Dance Company of Manhattan, a member of the prestigious BMI Jazz Composer's Workshop in New York City, composer and music supervisor for the independent film Two Guns (Lider Films, 2002), co-founder of the Geoff Ogle/Joe Phillips Big Band and founder of the No Standards Jazz Orchestra. In addition, Phillips has been a music cataloger/archivist for the manuscripts of Gil Evans and Manny Albam.

As an educator, Phillips has lectured at the Royal Conservatory (Koninklijk Conservatorium) in The Hague, Netherlands, and taught a successful, award-winning band program at Interlake High School in Bellevue, Wash., where he was named Educator of the Year in 1996.

Phillips' music has been performed in New York City at the Merkin Concert Hall at Lincoln Center, the Renee Weiler Concert Hall at the Greenwich House Music, the Merce Cunningham Dance Studios, the Cutting Room, the Triad, the Pink Pony Cafe and the Brooklyn Spring Jazz and Pop Festival. His compositions also have been heard at the Monterey Jazz Festival in California and on radio stations across the United States.

Contact David Gonnerman at 507-786-3315 or gonnermd@stolaf.edu.