The Jazz Rock Big Band performed a rocking show Saturday.

Rodrigo Mejia, Staff Writer

Beneath the vestiges of a quiet Saturday campus, a pulse of jazz echoes the halls and fills the soul.

Within the decadent confines of Sexson Auditorium, PCC’s own jazz combo and big band ensemble treat the few but privileged to a night of rhythmic genesis and rapture.

“The spirit is telling me to play some ‘Mammacita’ and it’s always good to listen to the spirit,” began Bobby Bradford, the musically aged and instinctual director of PCC’s Jazz Combo as the stage grew smaller and the sound climbed higher.

Much like the big band that would follow in its wake, the combo consisted of students from the music department who performed tributary pieces by legends such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Amassed like bookends with the borders outlined with brightly colored shirts and the filling a tight mixture of suits and ties, the members of the jazz combo made up for their small number with ‘only jazz knows how’ improvisation and solos.

“That’s the main difference between big band and the combo, it’s more spontaneous and improvised,” said Bradford, who kept the spotlight moving as the tip of his finger gave each member an opportunity to sing their individual ballad and lose themselves in sweat and sound.

With ceaseless and impassioned piano play from Hannah Park and funky swaying from trumpeter T.J. Hudson, the combo gave a resounding display of an intimate jazz ensemble which abruptly came to end and the Jazz Rock Big Band took stage and seized attentions with their immense presence.

The Jazz Rock Big Band, headed by director Andrea Baker-Wilkerson, quickly filled the stage with their mass of bodies and soon their ferocity of big jazz precision. The feel and lick of crisp scripted music, which made it seem like one miscue imploded the auditorium with musical energy, was reminiscent of the big jazz bands of old. “Jazz has a feel that never goes away, you feel it in your gut,” said Clifton Santiago, an audience member who had come to see his cousin perform.

Although the mass collection of instruments and bodies finished to a standing ovation, those that were clapping hardly numbered in the twenties as Sexson was left largely emptied all throughout the night. “It’s a shame people don’t come on Saturday night,” said Bradford. “You see people on Colorado walking around and looking at nothing when they could have caught some good jazz.”

Numbers aside, both ensembles proved the worth and richness of tradition that jazz was here on the campus. Chance Wilkerson, music major at the age of 22, thankfully added, “it’s a great school to practice music and look further ahead to a university.” PCC sends two-thirds of their music graduates to universities.

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