Libertyville Jazz Combo

“People sometimes have respect for [jazz], but people call it boring, old people music, which is why I wanted to start this because it’s known as elevator music,” stated junior Evan Hill. Hill, the band’s drummer (also in Moonwaves, another band composed of both LHS and VHHS students), gathered together junior guitarist Thomas Power, bassist sophomore Amanda Murbach, and senior trombonist Beck Ghantous (also in Fun Monkey) to start this jazz combo. Although this group came together for the 2018 Caring for Cambodia Band Jam in February, Hill started this group with high hopes of bringing the jazz sound back.

Hill is drawn to jazz music because he “noticed that all the drummers today sound bland, technical, repetitive and exactly the same. Then, you take a look at some of these old jazz drummers and they’re melodic, ringing, bright, warm and amazing.” The group agrees that playing together allows for everyone to have a good time.

Power explained that “jazz arrangements are really hard to create, and I put about 60 hours into one song and work on it gradually; like any other project, it’s a passion project.” Creating and playing jazz takes a lot of time and effort, which the group doesn’t mind, but scheduling times for practice is one difficult obstacle that they run into often with their busy schedules.

The combo plans on staying together for as long as possible and wants to work more over the summer together on practicing new arrangements.

“It’s sort of a deep passionate connection with the people that you are playing with because you don’t even have to speak the same language, you can just start playing together. That’s why it’s the universal language,” explained Hill.