Under the direction of local music legend Jim Mooy, the award-winning SBCC Lunch Break Big Band, nearly 20 members strong, broke ground as the first large ensemble in the world to perform a live jazz concert online, in real time on Oct. 23. All musicians performed remotely using new technology called Jamulus.
With video provided by Zoom, audience members enjoyed the show via YouTube. Live chat made it socially acceptable to communicate during the performance with comments, cheers for solo improvisation and connections made around great live music.
Among the few good things to come about due to the pandemic, Jamulus — and what the Lunch Break band is doing with it — has got to rank near the top.
From their home-studios (read: bedrooms, basements, garages), the group of nearly 20 musicians played a swinging set including “Limehouse Blues” arranged by Joe Di Fiore, Steve Williams’ “Elyeska,” Jeremy Levy’s challenging “95 or 64” and Alan Foust’s “Cold Tater Stomp.” The gig is still available to enjoy here.
Woven between charts was a lively narrative by Mooy that featured insight about the band members — who were performing locally as well as from Ojai, Los Angeles and Thousand Oaks — music-tech geek-peeks at Jamulus control panels, stories of the rehearsal process and fake applause to lend an air of realism to the venue.
The world will have another chance to enjoy an international live large-ensemble jazz concert, when the Lunch Break band shares the cyber-stage with Swedish virtual big band Jamulus Storband for a Sunday morning, coffee-in-bed, wake up-and-give thanks show at 8:30 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 22.
The program will feature a mix of beloved classics, and charts that should be beloved classics.
The Lunch Break band will bring “It Had to Be You,” “Body and Soul,” and reprises of “Elyeska” and “Limehouse.”
Storband will offer “Night and Day,” “Why Don’t Ya,” “Deedles Blues” and “Count Bubba.”
Sunday morning’s concert can be viewed on YouTube or via Facebook Live.
Jamulus was developed in Germany by five-string banjo/bass/guitar player and songwriter Volker Fischer and a team of volunteer engineers who recognized the need for musicians to collaborate remotely in real-time.
SBCC music professors Mooy and James Watson began communicating with Volker in April when Mooy recognized that Jamulus could be the answer to challenges faced by those in performance-based music education in the Covid era.
With the help of SBCC Business Services vice president Lyndsay Maas, the SBCC Music Department was able to obtain CARES Act funding to buy the necessary equipment for each student.
Yamaha Silent Brass systems were provided to students in apartments allowing their louder sounds to only be heard electronically and not by their neighbors.
The SBCC IT department, led by Jim Clark with the help of SBCC IT specialist Brandon Lovelace, built a custom Jamulus server with six virtual rehearsal rooms where students could connect to practice together.
Cox Communications offered a drastically reduced rate for a business cable modem to provide the fastest possible connections.
If ever there was a reason for so many sectors of the community to come together for a worthy mission, putting Jamulus in the hands of SBCC jazz musicians for all of us to enjoy in these hard times takes the cake. This Sunday, the coffee cake.