Where do you see yourself going from here?
What’s on the horizon for you?

Well, where we go from here really depends on the myriad of possibilities we try to pull in at one time. We are now opening up a new facility. For instance here at VCU music we have a renovated music center that’s offering us the first new facilities that we’ve had here in probably 20 or 30 years. That’s going to afford us new possibilities. We’re constantly revamping the kinds of technology that we have available to our students in terms of being able to sit at a keyboard in class and work at the computer at the same time and have the opportunity to teach themselves long distance. Right now for instance, our partner at In Your Ear Studios, Carlos Chaffin, who is a former VCU student and has a multimillion dollar studio here in town that our students visit and some work in, he’s been developing, in a partnership with a grant that I wrote, new software that will allow our students not only here, but eventually subscribing from distance learning sites around the world, to learn how to operate digital recording software at a very high level through personal instruction through Carlos Chaffin here in Richmond on DVD using various software that already exist and tying it together. This will be marketed through VCU. So those kinds of possibilities are things that we’re very excited about.

Musically we’re always looking for ways to try to grow. One of the primary ways we grow is through our Guest Artist Program. We try to keep honest through what it is important in musical expression by making sure that we’re constantly bringing in artists not only through VCU jazz but through VCU Music and the School of the Arts who will expose us to what’s going on now, what’s important, what’s the new cutting edge things but also the legends of the industry. We try to make sure we bring in not just the newest folks who are the buzz because they are young and upcoming but also the people who have spent the last 30 or 40 years dedicated to their craft and can really explain to our students how it’s done and how to grow and offer them inspiration. So our Guest Artist Program is something that is constantly evolving. I like to say that if there’s probably no part of the role of the Director of Jazz Studies that offers me more frustration and more delight than the Guest Artist Program because it’s a tip of the iceberg kind of scenario.

Every week, several times a week I will hear from artists who are potentially coming through the area and I will choose a selection of them with my faculty who will try to come in here and then we’ll work on the negotiations and large parts of those things will never come into fruition and so a lot of time is expended on an area that doesn’t bear fruit but the ones that do bear fruit offer perhaps more information and inspiration than anything else we do here so it’s an extremely important part of our growth here at VCU Jazz and in music in general. And then part of our goal is to, of course, keep recruiting the best possible students that we have. Some time ago as soon as five years ago we were quite concerned with the pool of applicants. We were seeing a dip off in terms of the quality and quantity. Overall there were great exceptions; we’ve had wonderful students come through here. But we’ve taken measures to make sure more people know about what we do and how well we can offer it to them and as a result throughout the School of the Arts, throughout the university, throughout VCU Music and throughout VCU Jazz we now have far more applicants than we can take and the pool of the applicants quality has grown tremendously to the point now that the students that come through now have far more experience than they did five years ago much less ten years ago. So this is an important part of us figuring out how to make VCU Music evolve and VCU Jazz evolve to be the best it can be for its students and the coming years.

We’re constantly looking for new ways to connect to the city. We’ve got Richmond’s Center Stage coming up in the fall 2009 I believe, which is going to be a new performing arts education center in downtown Richmond. We are working with that entity to find ways to bring more arts instruction to downtown Richmond and the community and will probably at various times allow us a new performance venue as well. So Richmond is growing, VCU Music is growing, VCU Jazz is growing in various ways, not just in size, but in quality in ways that I think we can really expect that the picture we see five years from or ten years from now is going to be very different from even the best that we can offer right now this year and that’s the evolution of education that I like to be a part of. I like that excitement, I like the possibilities and one of the reasons why I’m at VCU is because it’s very encouraging that there are possibilities and to try to make sure that… The great Humorous said if you’re not trying to stay ahead of the train it will basically run you over. And we want to make sure that we stay ahead of that train and we’re building a lot of track ahead for the possibilities that are in the future.