All that 'Apollo' jazz 

Greece (New York) Post 11/14/02

  Tom Reese is like a poet, writing the language of music with his flute.
  "It's free-form; there is no wrong," he told a crowd of student musicians gathered in the auditorium of Apollo Middle School Nov. 6.  "This is you, expressing yourself."
  His band, a Pennsylvania-based jazz quartet called the Reese Project, performed for more than 100 students last week.  The foursome then presented the youngsters with a daunting challenge: Using the notes they'd already learned that morning and in class, they were to play in unison without a musical script.
  Jazz, he told the students, has a "basic literature." Once that's been learned, the rest should come from inside, he said.
  It was a concept that appealed to seventh-grader Hayden Welch, who has been studying the clarinet for two years and sees a musical career in her future.
  "We're just learning improv," she said, her eyes wide. "I'd say I'm pretty good."
  Some of the students weren't quite as serious. One boy found the oversized brass bell of his slide trombone made a nice hat. Another picked attentively at his saxophone's neck strap. Still, others were bobbing their heads and tapping their feet to the music.
  "Now, I want you to play any notes you want in a certain rhythm," Reese told the students as the workshop came to an end. "This is free. It's soul."
  Apollo music teacher Bruce Trojan agreed.
  "Improv is spontaneous composition," he said. "But everybody can learn how to do it."
  It may have been the first time the students were being told to abandon the rules, especially by a man who, with his broad build and long gray ponytail, looks more like '70s classic rocker David Crosby than jazz great Miles Davis. Reese has been playing the flute ? what he calls his "axe" for 32 years and still practices, or "woodsheds," for two hours each day.
  His band's latest collection, "Blue Etude," features a drummer, a pianist and his wife, Laurie, a cellist.
  The album is being sponsored by the Commission Project, a non-profit Rochester agency that arranges for artist residencies in participating schools. The group contacted Trojan about Reese, and the middle-school teacher welcomed the idea of an improvisational jazz workshop.
  "They're learning improv now, and I thought it would be good for them to hear it from someone other than me," Trojan said of his students.
  On-the-fly playing puts musicians better in touch with their own rhythms and each other., Reese said. It's a matter of creating sounds in an order that just seems right, rather than by following a written plan.
  Reese made jokes throughout his presentation, poking fun at popular music: "the only time I'll 'rap' is a Christmas time."
  He taught the crowd some jazz jargon: "That was a 'cool ride,'" he said after one particularly rousing set. And, for the benefit of his young charges, he often spoke in sounds rather than words.
  "The first one is 'da, da, daaa," and the second one is 'da, daaaa,'" he said, giving the students a melody to play while the Reese Project performed a spontaneous number. "I learned English for no reason at all."