By: John Lamb, INFORUM
MOORHEAD – Simon Rowe, a Minnesota State University
Moorhead music teacher and area jazz advocate, has been tapped to head the Dave
Brubeck Institute in California.
Rowe finalized the deal this week after meeting with
Brubeck at the influential jazz composer and pianist’s Connecticut home last
weekend.
“It is exciting news. I’m still pinching myself,” Rowe
said laughing Wednesday morning.
Rowe, also a pianist, will start in mid-September at
the Brubeck Institute, located at the University of Pacific in Stockton, Calif.
He’ll oversee two programs for high school jazz
musicians across the country, one a touring troupe, the Brubeck Fellows, and
the other a summer jazz colony. Rowe will also curate the Brubeck collection of
music, contracts and artifacts the 90-year-old icon has created and acquired
over the years.
Brubeck is best known for the songs “Take Five,” “In
Your Own Sweet Way” and “The Duke.” He has been awarded a National Medal of
Arts, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2009 a Kennedy Center Honor.
“I’m just unbelievably thrilled to have a shot here
and do some good with arts, arts education and advocacy,” Rowe said. “We’re at
a point in our culture where we really need to value the arts in our culture
and the teaching of it and the passing on of it. To be able to do it at this
level is an absolute dream.”
He’ll also be involved in the annual Brubeck Festival,
which celebrates “the musical, philosophical and intellectual ideas” of the
composer, according to its website.
A highlight of this year’s festival was the premiere
of a Brubeck documentary, “In His Own Sweet Way,” by Clint Eastwood. Eastwood
is the chair of the institute’s honorary board, which also includes musicians
Herb Alpert, Quincy Jones, Winton Marsalis, Yo-Yo Ma, and filmmakers George
Lucas and Ken Burns.
Rowe, a native Australian, started teaching music at
MSUM in 2004. Since then he’s been a promoter of local jazz musicians, starting
regular gigs at the Hotel Donaldson and more recently at Studio 222, both in
downtown Fargo.
Nick Fryer, a guitarist and colleague in the MSUM
music department said Rowe was “a catalyst for bringing musicians together” and
credited the pianist with starting the Tri-College Jazz Combo.
The pair also worked to bring in national artists for
MSUM workshops and public concerts.
Fryer said the Studio 222 gigs will continue and he’s
already booked Latin Grammy-winning bassist Eddie Gomez and his trio to play
the room Sept. 9.
Fryer said he’d likely bring Rowe back in his new
capacity with the Brubeck Institute.
Rowe said “without a doubt” he would return to the
area as a Brubeck representative.
“All of those that I’ve had as associations and
partners in crime along the way and collaborators, I’ll have a chance to tie
their talents in to the greater mission,” Rowe said. “Without a doubt I’ll be
mobilizing some of my contacts and forces here.”
And while he’s planning a farewell gig, he leaves
knowing he left a mark on the local jazz scene.
“The amount of music and quality of music and
engagement of artists and students at all levels has increased,” he said. “I’m
thrilled to have played a part of that.”
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