All that jazz: Akron musicians seek to reinvigorate genre at University of Akron

In a city steeped in jazz history, local jazz musicians Theron Brown and Chris Coles, both University of Akron alumni and active performing and teaching artists throughout Northeast Ohio, have been hired as full-time professors to revamp UA's jazz program.

The university is working to rejuvenate the music school's jazz program in a town once known as the "Jazz Corridor of the Midwest," where jazz clubs on North Howard Street were a popular stop in the 1930s and '40s for musicians including Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong to perform in while traveling between New York and Chicago. Black entertainers stayed at the Matthews Hotel, owned by influential Black hotel proprietor George Mathews.

The city's rich jazz history, which earned Howard Street the moniker "The Harlem of Akron," is a point of cultural importance to Akron's Black community.

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"It's extremely important because any history gives us relevance for what we're doing" as jazz artists, said pianist Brown of Akron.

"I felt like the spirit (of Howard Street) lived on and helped me gravitate more toward doing more for the community," said Brown, 35, a Zanesville native who came to Akron in 2005 for his undergraduate jazz studies at the University of Akron.

'Jazz, as far as I know in Akron, has always been a place where great minds gather and exchange ideas'

Brown, a founder and artistic director of the annual Rubber City Jazz & Blues Festival in Akron, has been taking a deep dive into Akron's Howard Street jazz history over the last eight months, doing interviews and learning more through regional historians about the jazz district that was wiped out by the 1970s in the name of urban renewal.

"There weren't many developments in the U.S. that were actually just Black areas where there were businesses and people felt safe," Brown said of Howard Street.

"Even though it didn't look as glamorous as other parts of the city, it was theirs. They owned it," Brown said of the Black community. "And we don't see that here now.

"This music, jazz, it comes from the Black community but it's for everybody. That's what Howard Street represented and that's what we want to represent at the school, is that this is a safe place to learn music and to bring our ideas together."

Nine jazz clubs were on Howard Street, part of the Midwest jazz circuit, Brown said. But it's difficult to find much documentation on how the Howard Street jazz era had ended by the 1970s.

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"I think the history is important. It makes our jazz festival more relevant" in Akron, where the jazz scene defined the Black community, Brown said. "The more I learn, OK, yes, I have to keep this jazz festival and pay tribute for the city to those people that had built this spirit already."

Brown has been thinking about one day creating a place or an online home where people can learn about Akron's jazz history and see artifacts from the era.

"Howard Street was the absolute beacon for Black culture and arts in Akron," said saxophonist Coles of Cuyahoga Falls. "Jazz, as far as I know in Akron, has always been a place where great minds gather and exchange ideas and hear what other people are doing all over the country."

He was inspired by two of the late greats of the Howard Street jazz era, Akron saxophonists Jim Noel and Waymon "Punchy" Atkinson. Coles got to hang out with the latter musician through a mutual friend, and he and Brown played with Noel in his last gig in 2019 when Noel was 91, at Blu Jazz+ in Akron.

"The few interactions that I had with them were really influential," Coles said. "Even if it's just two times or three times, to be able sit in on a gig with someone like Jim Noel, who's considered an Akron mainstay, you can't help but be influenced by that and get that in your system."

The history of jazz at the University of Akron

Brown and Coles, a 36-year-old Cleveland native, are the first Black jazz artists to run the school's jazz program. It started under Roland Paolucci in 1978, followed by his former student Jack Schantz, who directed the program for 20 years before retiring in 2020. The late Paolucci, the jazz program's well-loved director for 22 years and an accomplished jazz pianist, started hanging out on Howard Street when he was in his early 20s, in the late '50s/early '60s.

"I just think that's where the spirit of all this kind of revolves around, between Howard Street and the university," Brown said of UA's current efforts to regrow its jazz studies program. "It allows students to be taught here and take what they know out into the world."

Marc Reed, director of the School of Music and the UA School of Dance, Theatre and Arts Administration, said he would have been thrilled to get either Coles or Brown to work at UA full time.

"To get them both full time the same year is awesome," Reed said.

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Coles and Brown, active performers and composers, also have strong ties within the community through their teaching and arts administrative involvement. Brown serves as vice chair of the University of Akron Arts Advancement Council, part of the university's AkronArts plan to enhance arts on campus and in the community.

Reed said the jazz program has been "treading water" for several years. The school of music has a strong instrumental music education program as well as strong bands, he said, but the jazz program hadn't been flourishing near the end of Schantz's tenure.

"It seems like if you have a strong instrumental music side, the jazz program should be strong too," Reed said. "For me, a jazz program is key to having a good school of music."

Hiring Coles and Brown together as full-time professors to take over the program is "a perfect storm," Reed said.

"I think it's important too for students to see people who are still working and active in their field. I think you learn just as much from somebody in a club or working on an album than you do in a textbook or hearing about what somebody did before," he said.

Who are Chris Coles and Theron Brown?

Coles completed his master's degree in performance at UA in 2013. He performs with many local ensembles as well as his own jazz quartet, Gleam. The saxophonist grew up playing in Salvation Army bands in Cleveland, including the Gabriel's Horns big band.

Coles was winner of a 2017 Knight Foundation Arts Challenge grant for his interdisciplinary work "Nine Lives," which he composed in memory of the nine shooting victims killed at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Brown, who grow up making music in his pastor father's church, received his bachelor's degree in jazz studies from UA in 2012 and his master's in classical piano this year. The Zanesville native won a 2015 Knight Arts Challenge grant to create the Rubber City Jazz & Soul Festival.

He lived in New York for a couple years and toured with the Glenn Miller Orchestra in the U.S. and Japan.

Coles and Brown, who've been friends for 15 years, perform together in Northeast Ohio often, including with the jazz octet Black Dog Octet. Both had taught part time at Kent State University, and Coles has kept the UA jazz studies classes going on a part-time basis since 2020.

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Brown has also taught at Youngstown State University, Cuyahoga Community College's Jazz Prep Program, various private musical schools and teaches youth at the nonprofit Open Tone Music in Akron. He's also the artist coordinator for I Promise School through Curated Storefront.

Coles also has taught at Aurora School of Music and Tri-C Creative Arts Academy.

Over the last two years at UA, Coles has taught jazz composition and arranging, jazz history and teaching jazz ensemble, which is a jazz technique class. Part of his focus with Brown is updating the school's jazz curriculum.

"Students generally know how to play music in high school but teachers don't always know how to explain how to improvise, so I've taken more of that approach" with jazz ensemble teaching class, Coles said.

Wanted: Jazz studies majors

Brown and Coles are working to rebuild the jazz program after the last jazz studies major graduated last year. Their mission is to attract new jazz studies majors to the university at the local, regional and, eventually, national level.

At its most recent peak, from about 2005 to 2010, the program had some 30 jazz majors, Brown and Coles said. The program has no jazz majors this semester but it's Brown's and Coles' mission to change that, both through updating the curriculum and recruiting students.

"There's no place to go but up," Coles said.

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They plan to recruit new majors by using their connections from doing master classes and serving as guest artists at high schools throughout Northeast Oho, including Akron, Cleveland, Canton and Youngstown.

"We can really hone in on Northeast Ohio and then gravitate toward all of Ohio," Coles said. "And as we keep going, I think we'll have enough wealth here that will be attractive to even other states."

The plan is to add more jazz professors to attract more students and regrow the program. Reed would like to hire at least three more jazz professors who specialize in all the jazz instruments, including bass, drums, guitar, trumpet and trombone.

Both Brown and Coles see their job as a passing of the torch from their own UA mentor, Schantz.

Brown said he's proud to be one of the first two Black artists to lead the jazz program and rejuvenate it.

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"I think that's amazing and it's inspiring because I didn't have teachers that looked like me when I was younger. I had to go somewhere else to experience that," Brown said of learning from Black artists. "Now I think we're gonna see a big change in the demographics of the university because we are there and we've been given space to bring our ideas and teach and do things our way, which I think is going to be culturally sound to the music.

"The first things we care about is the students, no matter what color they are," he said.

'Help propel Akron into a new age'

Brown and Coles currently co-teach a jazz ensemble class made up of 17 music education and performance majors. Through student word of mouth, the ensemble has grown from nine students last year. The jazz professors also are each teaching a general education Bach to Rock class online.

As they reshape classes, they're working to create more synergy between the music education and jazz education department as well as between the band department and the jazz department. They'll also offer jazz combo work in the future.

Brown is teaching his first UA jazz piano student too, a promising freshman. The jazz professors will work in synergy, with jazz piano students also having the opportunity to study jazz technique, composition and arranging with Coles. Saxophone students who wants to study piano also can take lessons from Brown.

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"The only way to make this thing work is collaboration," Coles said.

As active performing and teaching musicians, Coles' and Brown's goal is to connect the university with the community more. One way they plan to do that is by involving UA students with their own music gigs.

"If your teacher starts calling you for work, then I think that's great in itself too," Coles said. "I call my students all the time."

Brown stressed that he and Coles also will teach UA jazz students about the entrepreneurial aspect of being a working musician, including creating content, releasing singles and running the marketing and business ends of their careers.

"It's like a lead by example type thing too. I'm not going to stop creating music, and if that's in the forefront, I'm going to share that experience with the students too," Brown said.

They'll also talk with students about job opportunities surrounding performance, including teaching and arts administrative work such as booking artists for organizations.

"A lot of times, they don't even know they have these skills," Brown said of students.

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All of their educational efforts are part of keeping Akron's jazz legacy and culture alive.

"I think this younger (jazz) generation that Theron and I are a part of have a lot to say, and I think that we can really help propel Akron into a new age, musically speaking," Coles said.

Arts and restaurant writer Kerry Clawson may be reached at 330-996-3527 or kclawson@thebeaconjournal.com.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Musicians Theron Brown, Chris Coles work to jump-start UA jazz program