Jazz Articles

Howard University Jazz Ensemble 2023: Nefertiti

by Jack Bowers
January 13, 2024

The Howard University Jazz Ensemble was formed almost half a century ago, in 1975, by Fred Irby III, its first--and, so far, only--music director. Every year since 1976, the ensemble has recorded and released an album to showcase its prowess and growth under Irby's baton. This year's entry, Nefertiti, is a tribute to the legendary saxophonist Wayne Shorter, many of whose compositions have become jazz standards, including the album's title song. Interestingly, Shorter, a twelve-time Grammy winner ...

Howard University Jazz Ensemble: HUJE 2022

by Jack Bowers
December 21, 2022

Recordings by the superb Howard University Jazz Ensemble have been surfacing like clockwork each year since shortly after the orchestra was formed in 1975 by its first (and only) music director, Fred Irby III. Sometimes the albums have overall themes, while others (such as this one) are dedicated to one or more of the university's distinguished alumni. Andrew Nathaniel White III, a Washingtonian who graduated cum laude from Howard in 1964, was a multi-instrumentalist whose notable career ...

Howard University Jazz Ensemble: Hi-Fly

by Jack Bowers
October 24, 2020

In 2020, the superb Howard University Jazz Ensemble from the US capital marked its forty-fifth anniversary. Since its inception in 1975, the ensemble has had only one director, Fred Irby III, its founder and guiding force for lo these many years. One year after organizing the group, Irby assembled its members for a visit to a nearby recording studio, an annual practice that has continued uninterrupted every year since then. Why only one director? Listen to the ensemble's 2019 narrative, ...

Afro Blue: We Shall Overcome

by Jack Bowers
April 20, 2020

The vocal group Afro Blue was founded (in 2002) by its director, Connaitre Miller, Jazz Voice Coordinator at Howard University in Washington, DC. Miller's approach to vocal jazz is patterned after that of such celebrated groups as Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, the Manhattan Transfer and Take 6, a blueprint that has served Afro Blue well and led to numerous awards, locally and nationally, recognizing its excellence as a group and the primacy of its three previous recordings from 2013-15. We ...

Howard University Jazz Ensemble: HUJE 2018

by Jack Bowers
April 19, 2019

One sure sign of spring is the arrival of the latest yearly recording by the superb Howard University Jazz Ensemble, a tradition that dates without pause from the days of vinyl in 1976, one year after the ensemble was formed by its first and only music director, Fred Irby III. For archivists and numbers-crunchers, that's forty-four years and counting. Unlike some of its precursors, HUJE 2018 is entirely instrumental; it does, however, include the usual measure of ...

Howard University Jazz Ensemble: HUJE 2015

by Jack Bowers
May 2, 2016

In 1975, Howard University, a bulwark of higher education in our nation's capital since 1867, formed its first Jazz Ensemble and named a young trumpeter / educator, Fred Irby III, as director. One year later, Irby ushered the ensemble into a recording studio to verify its prowess, a tradition that has continued uninterrupted for forty years. Irby remains at the helm today, and HUJE 2015 is the latest in an ever-expanding catalogue of impressive albums produced by the university's flagship ...

Howard University Jazz Ensemble: HUJE 2014

by Jack Bowers
June 18, 2015

Another year, another splendid album by the exemplary Howard University Jazz Ensemble from Washington, DC. Not that that should surprise anyone; Fred Irby III, who is completing his fortieth year as the band's first and only director, has ushered his students into a recording studio for the last thirty-nine of them, dating back to the days of vinyl records, with essentially similar results: tasteful albums of big-band jazz that are as engaging as those produced by any university-level ensemble anywhere. ...

Howard University Jazz Ensemble: Journey of a Friend

by Jack Bowers
July 21, 2013

Although the Howard University Jazz Ensemble isn't quite as dependable as a morning sunrise, it has been present and accounted for in a recording studio once each year since it was formed in 1976 by Fred Irby III, who not only directed that first session but has supervised every one since, right up to No. 37, Journey of a Friend, which showcases the 2012 ensemble in a typically engaging album dedicated in part to the memory of former student Dianne ...

Howard University Jazz Ensemble: Here's to Life!

by Jack Bowers
June 25, 2007

Every year, almost like clockwork, director Fred Irby III sends me a copy of the Howard University Jazz Ensemble's latest recording, and I am always pleased and happy to be reminded that an undergraduate big band of this caliber resides and plays in my hometown (as a boy growing up in Washington, DC, I lived within walking distance of the Howard campus--but I did a lot more walking in those days).

Here's to Life! is the seventeenth album (since 1989) ...

Howard University Jazz Ensemble: HUJE '05

by Jack Bowers
May 17, 2006

Another year, another superb recording by the Howard University Jazz Ensemble from our nation's capital. Director Fred Irby and the ensemble have been dropping by the studio for many years now (my library includes all but one of their annual albums dating back to 1989), and each new entry in the scrapbook perpetuates the impressive musical standard of those that preceded it.

HUJE '05 is certainly no exception to that rule, encompassing nine admirable selections by the ensemble, four more ...