From IB Student to University Professor: An Interview with Drew Zaremba
An Interview with Drew Zaremba
Drew Zaremba is an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Northern Colorado (USA). He is a Selmer music artist who has a worldwide reputation as a writer, conductor, and performer. His works have been performed by the BBC Orchestra, the WDR and NDR Big Bands, The Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Metropole Orchestra, Wycliffe Gordon, Randy Breker, and countless more. Drew shares his journey with Jim as they reflect on his music experiences as an international school music student to college music professor.
JY: I am talking today with a very special person in my life. His name is Drew Zaremba, and he's special to me in many ways. But first of all, let me tell you a little bit about him. He's a recognized soloist, artist, arranger, and composer. His works have been performed by the BBC Orchestra, the WDR Big Band in Germany, the Dallas Symphony, and the Metropole Orchestra in the Netherlands. He is a professor of jazz composition and arranging at the University of Northern Colorado in the United States.
He's a worldwide recognized clinician and guest artist on saxophone. But I think what's very special about him is that I've known Drew since he was in 7th grade because I had the privilege and the honor of working with him as a teacher in jazz festivals that we had here in Europe when he was still a young student at the International School of Brussels. I've just been tickled to see his career blossom and I'm not surprised after I heard him in middle school already. He was also an IB student when he was at the International School of Brussels. And I just thought this would be a very interesting podcast in order to relay some thinking, some thoughts, some reflections about what it was like, the connection between being an IB student and actually being a practitioner of music, both as a performer, as an arranger, as a creator, and as a teacher. And I couldn't think of a better person to talk to than Drew Zaremba. So, Drew, hello, welcome.
DZ: Hi, Jim. Thank you so much for having me. You're opening the floodgates of nostalgia in my mind. I think fondly of our massive crazy concert in Tokyo. Do you remember that one? I think it was 20, oh, 2007, 2006 around there. Yeah, right around there. It was one of the highlights of my life. Just a beautiful concert, an incredible week. Crazy music, wonderful music. You exposed me to Don Ellis. We did a couple of Don Ellis charts. Loved that. And we did Sing, Sing, Sing with the Taiko drums. You've been involved in my life since I was in 7th grade. Jim is a dear, dear friend.
And I'm so just happy to be here and to talk about music with an old dear friend and mentor and someone who encouraged me to go back to the States and study music. You suggested North Texas as one of the places to consider going for my career for an undergrad (degree). I owe a lot to you, Jim, and your beautiful family. So thank you for having me here.
JY: So let's start here. Why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself? What kind of work are you doing? Where are you working? Give us a little bit of personal background and synopsis.
DZ: I'll be I'll be as brief. I did not grow up in a musical family, but my parents recall me saying when I was 3 or 4 that I wanted to learn every instrument in the world. And so they started, which was a shock to them.
They met playing tennis and are very sporty people. They started me on piano and I was very lucky that they paid for and took me to piano lessons from the age of 6 through 17. I started with basic piano books and went all the way through the Grieg concerto. My first piano teacher also by the time I was in first or second grade had me do it was 30-minute lessons, but then also 15 minutes of music theory on a computer program. I was very fortunate. My mom listened to smooth jazz (in the car). I'm from Southern California originally and I heard the saxophone and thought, oh, that's an instrument I want to play. (I) started picking up the saxophone in fifth grade.
"Meeting a lot of different people from all over the world...people speaking all sorts of different languages."
Then we moved to Belgium and this is a very important part of the story because this is where I started interacting with music in a very different way. Meeting a lot of different people from all over the world. Not just Californians, but now musical cultures and people speaking all sorts of different languages. And then getting together at jazz festivals in The Hague for solo and ensemble, wind ensemble, and a whole host of musical experiences that have influenced me to this day. And then of course, as you mentioned, doing IB music with my wonderful mentor and teacher, Doctor Eric Delson at the International School of Brussels. I went to North Texas, University of North Texas to study jazz saxophone. Fell in love with composition. Started composing for the big bands down there.
I ended up staying and doing my master's in jazz composition because of this incredible teacher who was there, Rich De Rosa, who was the chief conductor for the WDR band for several years and became a huge influence on me and my music. (I) stayed in Dallas for three years as a freelancer, and was planning on moving to Los Angeles to be a freelancer out there and do the jazz and studio scene. Then I got married. Also when I was in Dallas, which is a very important detail. And then all out of nowhere got a call from the head of jazz studies at the University of Northern Colorado saying, we had we noticed you hadn't applied to our jazz composer professor position. We were hoping you would do that. And I said, Oh my goodness, here we go. So I applied and got the job and now have been in Colorado for six years. I just got tenure last year which is crazy to think about, I still write music a lot and perform a fair bit.
DZ: The projects that bring me the most joy and, a sense of pride are the international collaborations that I've done. I don't say that just 'cause I'm here. You ask me any day of the week. That's my answer. I got to go to China to live in China for three months and study Chinese opera and combine it with jazz. The last international project I did, I was commissioned to write a Hindustani jazz fusion piece for orchestra, bansuri, tabla, bass, and guitar, which I just finished called Rhapsody and Raag Jog. (Link: https://www.performingartsreview.net/anjan-shah-rhapsody-in-raag-jog) And the commissioner, Anjan Shah is promoting it and trying to do it with orchestras across the country and all over the world. We did the world premiere here in Colorado this year, 2024. We're they're going to be doing it on the East Coast next year. There's a group in Belgium that's interested in doing it. So, I do all sorts of different kinds of music and love it all and love teaching as well, of course. So that's a short, long-winded answer, as the great Chick Corea would say.
JY: Let's narrow that down just a little bit. You've had a rich music career. When you were in high school at the International School of Brussels, you mentioned that you were an IB student and I know that the IB program has shifted quite a bit since that time. What was it like being an IB student back then? What did you gain from that or what do you remember from studying the course?
DZ: I decided not to do the full IB. (I) decided to kind of piecemeal, a program together with some AP classes and some IB classes to allow me a little more flexibility to study music and, continue doing the amount of practicing that I wanted to do. I obviously did higher (level) music. I owe so much to my experience at ISB (from an) international perspective, not just because of some of the experiences that I've already told you about in China, studying Indian music and then wanting to develop relationships, with people overseas, like my trips to Japan and Australia and Germany, among other places. My wife is Argentine and (we have) an immense love and respect for the global community and international culture and the quality of the education as well.
Doctor Eric (Delson) is now a dear friend but was a great mentor. I mentioned I fell in love with composition in college, but the truth is he planted that seed during my years studying with him because he would give me assignments all the time. I remember distinctly he said, all right, Drew, I want you to write a piece for solo flute based on the octatonic scale. And I said, why? I've only written pieces for piano and saxophone. What do you mean by flute? How does that work? What's the octatonic scale? And he said, all right, now you have some homework to do. He gave me some things to listen to. It was a profound experience being at ISB, being in that international community that I owe so much to. There's no doubt about it.
JY: If you were a high school student again, is there anything that you would do differently or could you offer any words of wisdom to a serious high school music student, whether an IB student or not? Things they should be thinking about if they're starting to get serious about music.
“IF YOU’RE GOING TO DO MUSIC, YOU NEED TO LOVE IT. DON'T DO IT FOR SOMEONE ELSE”
DZ: I do get to think about this quite a bit because we do have some high school festivals. We have a wonderful high school festival called the Greeley UNC Jazz Festival. And we have a lot of high school students coming through. I talk about a couple of different things. I guess my advice on the subject (would be): if you want to do music, make sure you're in love with it. Don't do it for someone else. It's the path music can be (which is) the beautiful things. It's variability. It's not a standard, oh, get this degree, get this internship, get this job. There's a lot of different paths it could take. It could be an education route, a composition route, a performance route, or a research route. It could be an amalgamation of all those and much more in the 21st century than any other time.
“ENGAGE IN MANY DIFFERENT WAYS”
Being a musician involves being all of those things, specializing less, and being a jack of all trades with maybe still a little bit of specialty here and there. I think what I would recommend to everyone is, first of all, to engage with music in many different ways. I encourage people to engage with the three primary elements of music, melody, rhythm, and harmony. I encourage everyone to sing, make sure that they sing and engage their voice and engage their melodic sense to play drums and engage their rhythmic sense and to play piano and engage their harmonic sense. Maybe one can hear harmony, but you won't truly know until you play that chord on the piano and know what it feels like to play it and absorb it.
“I encourage people to engage with the three primary elements of music, melody, rhythm, and harmony.”
The same thing with a beat on the drums or to sing a melody. It's not about doing it at a high level. I don't play drums at a high level. I don't sing at a high level, but I sing and tap and play all day. So just invest in your musical skills and remember to not neglect any (of them). We sometimes accent piano more than others because of our Western background, but we can't forget the importance of drums around the world, in particular from Africa, especially for me as a jazz musician. (There’s) the importance of singing. The vocal and lyrical connection with the music as the voice as our first instrument. You're practicing 3 things to engage with your practice.
"Learn to Listen Deeply"
But then as we've talked, as we were talking about earlier, Jim, to listen and not just to listen widely. To be influenced by a lot of different things. But for me, it's to listen deeply. And I think right now I was very fortunate that I just had an MP3 player with my 50 songs on it and it was on repeat constantly. For your generation, it was a record and it was 5 or 6 songs and that was it. (Now) there is Spotify the world suddenly on our phones, we have the entire record history of all music and it's completely overwhelming. How could you possibly dig deep into anything when you have an ocean? So what I recommend to students is to find something they love, memorize everything about it, and listen deeply, because that's going to increase your music vocabulary and your ability to talk about music because you have an expert frame of reference to bring to other genres, to bring to other styles.
JY: You inspired a thought when you were starting to talk about the relationship between what you need to know and what jazz meant and so on. And it got me thinking about the connection between jazz and global music, dealing with the unfamiliar.
For example, when I was a young student, a young middle school, high school student, and my first exposure to jazz. We're taught that jazz had its African influence and it started with ragtime and Dixie. And there were the hymns and the African American influence and the development of the Western exposure to these hymns and to the African experience. In a very broad nutshell foundation of jazz from the late 19th century, early 20th century, post antebellum time in the United States. There was the opportunity for it to merge it, it connected (European and African ideas) and it went through that pretty much for that whole century, (evolving) to fusion and going to contemporary and going to who knows what.
But I'd be kind of curious to know your thoughts on this too, because if someone were to ask me now what the difference is, what the definition of jazz is, well, it's certainly more than that African American influence. And I find it very difficult, to delineate the difference between jazz and global music. What I find is that now you have this culture of American Music going back to pop and rock'n'roll and disco and hip hop and funk. And now it's making its way back, to its roots where finding the fusion of these elements, developing something that we have no idea where this is going to go to. But it's like, I have a feeling it's taking a full circle. This is not a question, it's just a comment. I'm thinking in terms of how did it get there? It got there because we're listening to the unfamiliar. We're dealing with things that we didn't know where we as human beings are looking and valuing a culture that's not ours and finding relationships in those cultures.
"EMBRACING THE UNFAMILIAR"
DZ. I'm not too much of a jazz historian, but there's no doubt about it that, there are some scholars who don't even like the word jazz, but prefer, of course, black American Music like you were talking about, like the whole world put jazz in the as the father of all these other genres that came from it are going to R&B and hip hop. Basically like the lineage of all this together. This to me as a white person, makes me think about the music in a different way. As in, if I'm going to play music, that is not of my particular culture, I need to do it with the utmost intention and respect. It's not to say that I can't do it right, but of course not. Music is for everyone. But it's saying, Ah, there's a history here, There's an intention.
If I'm going to get at the core of the music, I should study not just the history, but also some of the isms going back to ragtime, but also from bebop and transcriptions and all of these things that I think are important. I think of other kinds of music that were fusion as well. You know, we call Latin jazz part of jazz, but really it was happening independently. If the fusion happened before it got to the United States, you know, it was happening in Cuba, it was happening in Brazil, it was happening all over the continent in their different ways. As a lover of Afro-Caribbean music and Afro-Brazilian music, there are other different types of fusions that were happening due to the ugliness and the evil of slavery forcing this fusion. Now we have this, this incredible music that's happened because we can now dig into and study and cherish and respect and love.
“the four categories of making a career in music: performing, teaching, composing, and technology.”
I remembered something I did want to say earlier. Especially for advice for some high school students. I call it the four categories of making a career in music: performing, teaching, composing, and technology. I think developing in each area is important for high school students. So don't, if you're more of a tech guy, don't not perform. Make sure you spend some time performing too. If you're just a performance person, you want to spend some time on the computer learning how logic works, how to get yourself in front of a DAW, and start writing music. And so for composers, I say a lot of the same thing.
I say make sure you finish your pieces. That's one of the biggest things I recommend for people to do. I had a teacher, Eric, who encouraged me to do that because it's not a piece if it's a fragment out there, you need to put a final bar line on it and you need to put it in front of a musician so you can learn from it. Developing those four areas is important for high school which is what sounds like what IB is really focused on and what I did too in a slightly different way, but definitely did, I was able to get a lot of that out of my IB experience.
JY: You highlighted this already, but if you could reflect back on your first year as a freshman at North Texas, did you feel ready? Did you feel prepared? Were there surprises? Did you feel like you had an advantage over anybody or a disadvantage?
DZ: I definitely felt like I had an advantage. I tested out all of my piano (proficiencies), a lot of theory, and oral skills. It gave me more time to dig into some things that I wanted to dig into (such as) composition and orchestration. I got to sing in the jazz choirs and I was very grateful for that. I had more time on my schedule in order to do some of the things that I wanted to develop more. Everyone can pursue a music degree if they want to. I believe talent comes in many different levels. But at the end of the day, talent only takes you so far.
"Make music practical and prepare for the real world."
It's perspiration and hard work that will carry you over the finish line into a career. Some people were really starting out with very little theory experience and some people got discouraged by that and other people met the challenge and and rose to it. So this is not to say it's a good or a bad thing. It just meant that was for them or wasn't for them. So there were a lot of varying levels. I was very fortunate because of IB and going back all the way to my music theory lessons as an 8-year-old with my piano lessons starting from there and building all the way through that. I was very well prepared for my freshman year at North Texas.
JY: I think there's an aspect of the current new IB curriculum that wasn't there when you were an IB student. It's called the Contemporary Music Maker. The students have to create an artistic vision, record the process, and then record the project. It could be something like making an arrangement for a special event or for a theme, environmental theme, or soundtrack to a movie or whatever. Anyway, they have to multitask. They have to know how to collaborate with people. They need to know how to arrange, how to organize, how to set deadlines, book rehearsal rooms, and make a budget. If you were still in high school, (I think you would like this.) You would just think, oh, I got this idea, or I can't decide which artistic vision. I have 100 of them. I'd like to do this and this and this. But basically, what it's supposed to be is that there's really no written test anymore. It's going on to university. The university would be requested to say, well, why should we take you? And the student would say, well, here, let me show you my YouTube channel. This is what I did. This is my project. This is who I am. You can hear me in my music here, you can hear me playing. You can hear what I did to organize this. You can see the amount of research that I've done to do this. This is it. And it's in 7 1/2 minutes. I was just thinking, that you are now a mentor of young students. Maybe you could go a little bit deeper on this for college students who are getting ready to move on, they're exiting the program. They’ve been through the system and they're getting ready for a serious career in music. Could you highlight a little bit more about the demands of teaching for a student like that? What, do you find your responsibilities for preparing students for, let's say the real world? It's not college anymore. It's not for the grade. This is your bread and butter. This is what you need to do. Do you have any words of wisdom that you would like to impart to us in terms of college-level students?
DZ: I'd love to. It's actually something I think about most days as a college professor and, teaching for the most part, grad students. I'm very lucky in that most all my private lesson students are grad students and I teach one or two undergraduate classes a year. But then I interact with them in lots of other settings. My primary purpose is to prepare my graduate composition students for a career in composition and other things. Those four big categories I told you about first and foremost, I want to give them skills right. We talked about piano, drums, and singing, but for a composer, skills involve writing for a lot of different genres for a lot of different instrument types. So we spend a year or a semester looking at big band and small group writing.
We need to connect the study of music to the real world.
We spend a semester looking at vocal writing. We spend a semester looking at orchestral writing. Our first lesson is always the same. I ask the same question. All right, we're here in grad school. Let's get ready for the day that you're leaving. It'll be over when you before you realize it. What do you want to do? What is your goal and what is your what is your 10 year goal? I always work backward. What's your dream? And then we work backward on 10 years, what we need to do to get in 10 years from now. Five years from now, Three years from now, one year from now? OK, let's let's build this out and see if we can achieve that dream. And then if they say something that's really realistic, I'll say, oh, that's perfect, let's go. Or if they say something that's very lofty, I say, OK, great. So like maybe that's a little too specific. Let's broaden that dream just a tiny bit and talk about some ways to get there.
It's important to establish your goals and make an artistic vision.
But ultimately, it's what you already said. And what I love that IB is doing with the high school students is an artistic vision. There aren't enough orchestras lying around and in just the (same) for studios, there isn't enough studio work. Just doing one thing is over. And that's why I was talking about being a Jack of all trades, you need to be able to work year-round. You need to have a couple of different plates spinning. Some people do it just by performing, but very, very few do. Most people are performing and teaching or most people are composing and teaching.
Some people are just doing DAW work as engineers, but they also might do live sound or one of my dear friends is a trumpet player, professor, and graphic designer. You can't just wait for the work to come to you. We all have to be. It's kind of it sounds really cliche, but we all have to be leaders. We can't just be side men. We have to be leaders in our life. That doesn't mean capital L leader. It just means a leader. You have to have a plan, not just stumbling through it. You have to be somewhat entrepreneurial. You have to be ready to adapt, and change. Go with this idea. Oh, that's not working. Try something else in those different 4 categories of music.
"The days of doing just one thing are over."
I think the most stable career, of course, is education. Being a full-time educator, you're still mentoring students. And so you have to have your finger on the pulse of what's going on in the music world and in other parts of society. And so it's not just a matter of, oh, well, this is easy. No, it's the hardest one. It's easier in that you don't have to be as entrepreneurial, but there's still inner politics and budgets and things that you have to do. If you want to grow your program and have it be more successful and a great experience for the students, you need to apply that same mindset to your teaching position.
JY: One of the things I tell my own students who are getting serious about music and want to consider a career in music and they already know this in high school. I say to them that the odds are pretty good that the job that you're going to end up doing hasn't been created yet. The second thing I said, the odds are further pretty good that the job that you end up doing, you will probably have created yourself. This whole concept of entrepreneurship and being your manager is something to really give some forethought.
DZ: And for some people, it comes very naturally and for some people, it takes a long time to get there. But that's not a bad thing, you know? And it means that people who are really entrepreneurial will take a lot of risks and, and try different things. People who are less will find the opportunities that are just right for them in order to create their career and this is OK when this happens, it actually happened a lot during the pandemic because work just dried up.
“You can't lose music and it only enriches, it only gives, it never takes away.”
A lot of people switched careers. They decided that music was important to them, but not as a career. And so they were working in music. They were doing all sorts of different jobs. And then they decided to go into coding or real estate or something with a little bit more security. And there's totally nothing wrong with that. And maybe sometimes they do this and combine it with a music career. Sometimes they leave music behind and do it just as a hobby. This person is pursuing what they need to do for their life and they’ll never lose music. You can't lose music and it only enriches, it only gives, it never takes away. Put some perspective on that and not say, that being a musician is the best or the highest calling or something like that. We know that's more hyperbole.
JY: Let's change it just a little bit before we run out of time here. Can you tell us a little bit about what are you doing now? What are you getting, your hands all wet with?
DZ: I'm very proud of my latest CD release called Reunion, which is a big band CD that we recorded in 2021 that we released in late 2023. So it's not even a year old yet. It's a big band album produced by my mentor and friend John Clayton. And it's wonderful. I'm very proud of it. It's a CD with a bunch of original music and original and re-imaginations that's on Spotify and anywhere you consume music. Like I said before, the Rhapsody and Rock Joke project is something I'm very, very proud of.
The 20-minute concerto for bansuri and tenor saxophone with strings and tablet and rhythm section. I'm very proud of that. Right now, the project that probably occupies most of my time is I'm the artistic director of the Colorado Jazz Repertory Orchestra. I think we're in our 10th or 11th year of existence. I've been involved with the project for about four or five years now and I'm the music director and artistic director. So we play about six or seven big band shows a year and anywhere from 10 to 20 small group concerts a year. I collaborate with my executive director. We put together themes and then I pick music that fits those themes. We want to get a big audience to enjoy Great American music. So we did, we do straight-ahead jazz, we're doing some New Orleans jazz. We just did a whole concert of Brazilian music. We just did a whole concert with Carole King and James Taylor. So part of the more American hit makers, not straight ahead jazz at all, but shares a lot in common with great American music. We're recording a CD next month with the great Tashiana Lady Mayfield, a collaborator of mine from Dallas who just moved to Denver, an incredible vocalist. I'm writing a bunch of arrangements for her. I just finished actually all of them. You can go to coloradojazz.org to find out more about us.
And then I'll be taking my sabbatical where I hope to be living in Colombia with my family for at least a couple of months and studying Colombian music and learning Spanish and collaborating with some of the conservatories in Bogota and Medellin as part of a partnership between UNC and the government of Colombia in exchanging information of music education. Although the biggest joy in my life is my three-year-old son, Charlie. So I do make sure I try to take some time and spend time with him and, my wife and, and spend time just as a family together sharing with him the joy of music and everything that comes along with that brew.
JY: We're just about to wrap this up. Do you have any closing thoughts ideas or readings you want to give the global music community?
DZ: Only to say thank you Jim for the conversation. I hope this was helpful and enlightening to the listeners, just hopefully to encourage you that music is important and beautiful and worth our time. We need to believe in ourselves and believe in music because there are fortunately forces out there that support us. But there are forces out there that would say that music is not worth supporting and that music is not worth our time. And they're wrong. And that our art matters and our humanity matters. That's all I'll leave you with.
JY: Yeah, very well said, Drew. This has been a real privilege and an honor for me after all these years to have this sort of fireside chat with you and to have you share your thoughts. We wish you well. We look forward to hearing your work and wish you well with all the experiences, and the multitude of projects that you have going on. So also, I want to thank you dearly for spending this time with us. It's been a real gas.
DZ: Thanks. The pleasure's all mine. Thank you so much, Jim. Take care.