essay by Douglass Frank
published in Focus magazine

The Rutgers Jazz Ensemble treated an appreciative audience to a driving big-band performance worthy of a New York nightclub. The band's solid rhythm, finely coordinated section work and creative solos drew an enthusiastic response.

The young players in the band, from precocious undergraduates to 30-something globetrotting graduate students, share a love of the jazz idiom with Ralph Bowen, a veteran performer and role model.

Bowen serves as Coordinator of Jazz Studies at the Mason Gross School of the Arts. He also leads the Rutgers Jazz Ensemble, where students hone their "chops" and showcase their talents in the shadow of the Big Apple.

Bowen has sparked the student group to new heights, although the Jazz Ensemble  [founded in 1972]  has had a long history of success. Talent level is high in the ensemble, a fact he attributes to a good teaching faculty, whose reputations draw accomplished students.

Over the years that faculty has included such leading lights as pianist Kenny Barron, bassist and Jazz Studies Program founder Larry Ridley, trumpeter William Fielder, and Ted Dunbar, guitar.

"Prof" Fielder remains on the faculty and is joined by jazz notables Ralph Peterson Jr., Mike Richmond, Vic Juris, Scott Whitfield, Tommy Igoe and, most recently, Stanley Cowell. faculty info

Among the jazz performers to come out of the Rutgers program over the years are both Bowen and Peterson, who currently play in a band together, as well as trumpeter Terence Blanchard, pianist Harry Pickins, trombonist Frank Lacey, and saxophonist and composer Thomas Chapin.

"I like to make note of why students come here to audition" said Bowen. "Time and time again, they speak of Rutgers' reputation. 'My teacher recommended that I come here' -- I hear that a lot. I really think that has to do with the faculty and its traditions."

Bowen has come to be regarded as an effective leader possessing playing experience combined with solid pedagogy and an understanding of what his charges can accomplish.

Bowen said it is important to give students as wide a range of experiences as possible -- from historically valid music, like Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson and the Count Basie Orchestra, up to the music that is current today.

"Monday night in the city, there are many latter-day big bands going strong with original music and original arrangements, as well as standards" Bowen noted. "If our students experience both kinds of music here, they are better prepared to go in and fill in and perhaps get a chair." About a half dozen of the ensemble players go to New York frequently and sit in with the pros.

Although they differ widely in both age and experience, two members of the ensemble share an appreciation for Bowen's teaching and performance abilities.

Mike, a 20-year-old junior guitarist from Agawam, Mass., who studied violin and trombone before taking up the guitar,observed that Bowen "really stresses that people should motivate themselves" and he sets a "good example because he is a consummate instrumentalist."

Chicago-born Derrick, 34, who left graduate school in Indiana to tour with the Count Basie Orchestra for several years, recalls rebelling against the class work at first.

"I was a New York musician: 'You can't show me anything. Why am I here!' And then once I got into the classroom and saw what was up on the chalkboard, I said, 'Oh, really! Well, I'd better go ahead and take these notes.'"

Bowen advises all his charges who seek a full-time career in jazz that they might not be able to make a living in one town, even New York, with jazz alone. "If you have a position with a show band or in a studio or are teaching, then you can augment that jazz career. But if it is just jazz, you have to move around," he said.

"For most of us in the business, it's not an overnight success situation. You have to build a long-standing reputation, one step at a time."  

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