NC Central's jazz program safe, dean and director say

Posted by Sylvia Pfeiffenberger on Thu, May 28, 2015 at 5:56 PM
Jazz lovers winced this week upon seeing that N.C. Central’s celebrated jazz program had landed on a list of degrees to be cut from the UNC system. It seemed to many that it would simply be discarded like a low-selling title.

The Daily Tar Heel first reported on the May 21 UNC Board of Governors meeting, where a vote to eliminate “less productive” degree programs speared both jazz and theatre at Durham’s HBCU. 

“I’m lost. Why are they eliminating the jazz degree at NCCU?” Mint Julep Jazz Band vocalist and co-leader Laura Windley wrote. Four members of Mint Julep have ties to the prestigious jazz program. “I need this pool of talent for dances and gigs!” 

Concerned calls and emails poured in to the university from parents, alumni and current and prospective students from as far away as Germany. Of just over a hundred HBCUs, Central is one of only a handful that offer degree programs in jazz.

“Some of the students who called me were literally in tears,” says assistant professor and Vocal Jazz Ensemble director Lenora Helm Hammonds.

But the situation is more complicated than first reported—and significantly more reassuring: “The rumors [of] the death of jazz at NCCU have been greatly exaggerated,” wrote music department chair Ralph Barrett in an email distributed to students this week.

Carlton Wilson, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, concurs.


“The program is not eliminated,” he said. “It’s been realigned in the Music Department. That was our proposal, our plan. We go through this every two years. We review our programs, and we have to make adjustments based on our findings. The [jazz] program is not going away. It’s intact.”

read more: http://www.indyweek.com/music/archives/2015/05/28/nc-centrals-jazz-program-safe-dean-and-director-say