Baker still cookin’ up jazz

By Ashlee Nicole Green
asngreen@indiana.edu

If jazz were an IQ test, David Baker would be a genius.

As awards for his jazz and teaching mastery pile up, Baker, a distinguished professor of music and chairman of the jazz department, remains a humble, influential and respected figure in the jazz world.  

Baker earned both his bachelor’s and his master’s degrees from IU in music education. He has studied with many master teachers, performers and composers, including Gunther Schuller, J. J. Johnson and George Russell.

“David Baker is a remarkable individual and musical resource for Bloomington, IU and the world,” Director of Jazz Fables David Miller said.

Miller said Baker is a jazz renaissance man, taking on such roles as jazz cellist, author, composer, director and educator.

“Baker has many world-class students with prominent careers as performers and in jazz education,” Miller said. “He is a really incredible, productive teacher that attracts many students to IU.”

Baker has taught at IU since the 1960s and has many successful students, such as Tom Walsh, who is now an associate professor of saxophone and jazz studies.

Marlon Webb, one of Baker’s current jazz history students, said he expects great things from Baker and the course.

“He said himself that, being that he has lived through so many eras of jazz, he can explain it better and more expressively than the book,” Webb said. “I look forward to that.”

Baker said he helps bring jazz to life by teaching new generations about its roots.

“Through my experience with music, jazz is a non-controversial music of the arts that everybody enjoys,” Baker said. “It’s an American invention that we keep alive as our art music.”

Baker’s fables

As part of the Jazz Fables concert series, Baker will perform in his self-named group, the David Baker Sextet, from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday Jan. 15 at Bear’s Place in Jazz Fables Presents “David Baker Sextet.”

“The concert is a tribute to Freddie Hubbard and his Naptown roots,” said Baker. “Like I, he was born in Indianapolis. He just recently passed away and was one of the most influential players of all time. He has played with some of the greatest jazz players of all time, including Quincy Jones, J.J. Johnson and Sonny Rollins, and won a Grammy award for his work ‘First Light.’”

According to David Miller, director of Jazz Fables, the group was originally started in spring 1977 as an acoustic jazz sextet featuring Miller and other musicians. The current group began in fall 1989 and features IU graduate and undergraduate students.

The group plays a weekly concert series Thursdays at Bear’s Place during happy hour. The series includes different classic and modern jazz compositions every week.

“David Baker was one of our first guests in the fall 1989,” Miller said. “Ever since then, we feature him once in the fall, once in the spring and once in summer semesters. If it wasn’t for him, Jazz Fables would not be at the standard it is today.”