Dr. John Madere (left) accompanied guest artist Charles Pillow (right),
assistant professor of saxophone and woodwinds at the Eastman School
of Music in New York City. Pillow came to Southeastern to teach a master class
to music students and perform during the Bill Evans Jazz Festival.
The Lion's Roar/Sara Patrick
The Department of Fine and Performing Arts hosted the annual Bill Evans Jazz Festival in conjunction with the Louisiana Association for Jazz Education State Music Festival. The festival featured performances by special guest Charles Pillow, assistant professor of jazz saxophone at Eastman School of Music in New York.
The Bill Evans Jazz Festival honors one of Southeastern’s most accomplished alumni. When Evans was a young man, he played polkas in central New Jersey for $1 an hour. At age 17 in 1946, Evans came to Hammond and was active at Southeastern Louisiana College. He led a team of music students to win the intramural football championship. Evans also became the first president of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity and joined the Thirteen Club, an academic honor society.
However, Evans’ real passion was always music. He spent hours at the piano in Pottle and once said, “When you play music, you discover a part of yourself that you never knew existed.” After graduating, Evans went on to perform for an audience of over 80,000 in Tokyo. He was also known for his revolutionary trios, creative music videos and his work on Miles Davis’ album “Kind of Blue.”
The Bill Evans Trio came to Southeastern in 1979 for a concert, before which he gave his fellow musicians a tour of campus and sat in to listen to the Southeastern Jazz Ensemble practice. He gave this concert less than a year before his death.
The festival has been held in Evans’ honor for 14 years. This year many junior high and high school jazz bands competed. Thirteen jazz ensembles performed including college bands from Nicholls and Southeastern.
Many high school musicians attended the performance by special guest Pillow and friends. Pillow is known for mixing classical, jazz and other genres in his unique approach, as well as for being a skilled multi-instrumentalist. For this special performance, Pillow played a variety of instruments including the saxophone.
Pillow has recorded five CDs as a leader and over 100 as a sideman for many artists including Jay Z, Chaka Kahn, Gladys Knight, Luther Vandross and Tony Bennett. Pillow was accompanied by John Bishop on guitar, John Jones on drums, Dr. John Madere on bass and Oscar on piano. The concert highlighted each musician while flowing as a cohesive unit through both upbeat and smooth jazz melodies.