New director Steve Wiest takes jazz into the 21st century

t’s 1977, the first year of the Spoleto Festival USA, and a packed crowd of 2,000 waits to hear the One O’Clock Lab Band, the famed jazz band from the University of North Texas. Director Leon Breeden steps forward to tell the audience the band’s student musicians are about to perform a piece of music they’ve never rehearsed. During the concert. With no practice whatsoever.

The piece, it turns out, is fairly easy, but Breeden wants to make a point: The One O’Clock Lab Band is so good they can perform a piece they’ve never played before. What the audience doesn’t know – or the 19 band members, for that matter – is the next piece will also be unrehearsed. The diabolical Leon Breeden had told no one ahead of time. Second trumpeter Bill Collins, then a graduate student studying jazz, says he felt the urge to shout to the full house, “We’re sight-reading this one, too.”

The band got a standing ovation that night – as they always do – but Bill remembers the pressure of living up to the band’s tradition of excellence, dating back to the 1940s. “What if you’re in the One O’Clock Band that didn’t get one?” he says.

Not to worry, it hasn’t happened yet. Members of the One O’Clock Lab Band are renowned for their improvisational skills and ability as professional musicians. Besides a string of Grammy nominations (two for the "Lab 2009" album), the band boasts an international touring reputation, with stops in 15 countries and countless venues, including the first invitation to a university band to play at the White House in 1967. Add the UNT College of Music’s huge library of big band music arrangements and you have nirvana for jazz teaching and musical creativity.

Bill, recently retired from a 35-year career as a jazz trumpeter, remains a fan of the band. He particularly relishes going to rehearsals and listening as the students transform themselves each semester into the premiere ensemble of UNT’s renowned jazz studies program – the oldest (and the first) in the nation.

It’s minutes before 1 p.m. and the 19 members of the One O’Clock are warming up their instruments as director Steve Wiest, clad in casual jeans, descends the stairs for rehearsals in Stan Kenton Hall. The College of Music has nine “O’Clock” jazz bands and more than 40 other small bands, but entry into the One O’Clock Lab Band remains the most competitive. In the band’s six decades, only four men have directed the band – Gene Hall, Leon Breeden, Neil Slater and now, Steve Wiest, the silver-haired maestro who was appointed director in 2009.

Listening to the musicians warm up before practice, the band sounds like a musical zoo. But when Steve, the ringmaster, enters, he manages to pull that energy together to form a memorable night at the circus for all. As he wordlessly swaps a cushioned chair for a wooden bar-height one, the musicians stop warming up.

Twice a year, hundreds of musicians audition for the band’s 19 cherished spots: five saxophonists, five trumpeters, five trombonists, plus piano, guitar, bass and drum players. Vocalists, guest artists and additional instruments are often incorporated. Today, for instance, five flutes and a piccolo trumpet join the roster. The auditorium’s green seats are dotted with visitors, a reminder of the performance-ready mode the members live in – even at rehearsal. Since becoming director, Steve’s adopted one saying of his predecessor: In the One O’Clock, everyday is an audition. “That’s one of the reasons that the One O’Clock sounds like it does. They’re not allowed to be anything but great,” says Steve.

Steve’s tenure with the band began in the 1980s. After a stint in Maynard Ferguson’s band from 1981 to 1986, he began working on his master’s at UNT, where he was a featured trombonist and arranger for the One O’Clock Lab Band until he graduated in 1988.

He remembers being awed his first day as he sat down in a chair used by greats such as Tom “Bones” Malone and “Blue” Lou Marini, both former members of the Saturday Night Live band and The Blues Brothers. “I think that’s the feeling that all One O’Clock students have on their first day,” he says. “They realize the deep tradition, and just like a lot of people can tell you quarterbacks on a sports team, they can tell you the lineage of their chair all the way back to the ’40s.”

Like the musicians, the directors have had to keep up the tradition of excellence while finding their own niche. Steve’s legacy is still evolving, but for the moment, he’s got one focus: bringing jazz music back to the forefront of public awareness. He wants to use 21st century tools – such as the new iPhone app that allows users to see videos, read news and play trivia – while building on what previous directors did in making the One O’Clock memorable to audiences (even those with limited or nonexistent interest in jazz).  “We hear jazz all the time as background music and incidental music in movies and stuff, and people are aware of it on an organic level. But they need to be aware of it – I think - consciously. That this is this country’s great classical music.”

Steve tells the band to pull out “Values,” a piece written by his predecessor Neil Slater, as he pops in a CD of the rehearsal music. Kneeling on his knees to reach the player, Steve jokingly says he’s praying the band will sound good today – for the camera crew filming the practice. He makes another joke about an old guy dealing with technology. Laughing, the students pull out the piece they’ll be rehearsing for the first time today, not an uncommon occurrence, as the One O’Clock doesn’t spend many days practicing a single piece.

At rehearsals, Steve usually takes the band through the music until he is ready to “start goofing with it.” That’s where the fun comes in. Nearly every One O’Clock Lab Band performance is unique, led largely by spontaneous improvisation and the feeling of the moment. It’s one of the band’s signatures – modernizing classical jazz pieces.

“Improvisation is essentially spontaneous composition. In our rehearsal, it’s just as much a percent of the written music as it is the improvised,” says Steve, who thinks it’s like a conversation where there is a certain amount of give and take between players – a musical democracy.

Today is different. Steve takes the One O’Clock through the piece to work out its technicalities; he’ll leave the improving for later. Occasionally, Steve cues musicians with his ringed left hand. The CD heard a moment ago comes to life. At first, slow and soft; then, the drummer introduces a faster section – and a more powerful sound. A wall of modern, large ensemble jazz vibrates against the skin as musicians’ faces crescendo to sunburnt red.

Near the end of the rehearsal, Steve has the band work on “Alone Together” by Richard DeRosa, with a featured appearance by bassist Scott Mulvahill, an undergrad student, at the end. All eyes turn to him as his bow plays the final slow notes. Even those in the audience who aren’t professional jazz artists know something is off.

Scott plays several wrong notes.

Looking over the rim of his glasses, Steve says little. “Scott will figure it out,” he says. He then counts the band off to start again. On the second try, Scott nails it.

As Scott’s bass sings the final cello-like notes, the clock turns to 1:50 p.m., and Steve ends rehearsal. For a brief 50 minutes, the students sitting in the black practice chairs were anything but ordinary college kids. Now, as they pack up instruments and book bags, the audience is reminded that these students, among the world’s greatest jazz musicians, are the future. 

 by monique bird