To be inside the music, to hear it, to feel it, from within a group of musicians. To be surrounded by sound, to be one of the people creating that sound. “Incredible,” “amazing,” “extraordinary” are words Tom Walsh uses to describe that experience. “I wish everyone had the opportunity to sit in the middle of an orchestra.”

Putting himself and others “in the middle of an orchestra” has been Thomas P. Walsh’s passion and life work. He is Robert J. Waller Sr. and Robert J. Waller Jr. Professor of Music, professor of music in saxophone, and chair of the Department of Jazz Studies at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He has presented concerts and workshops in China, Brazil, Austria, Slovenia, and Costa Rica, among many other countries.

When it comes to jazz at IU, Tom is the man who speaks from inside the music. 

As a recent “Bloomerang” (an IU alum returning to Bloomington as a retiree), I dive into live jazz the way I used to frolic in the old stone quarries outside of town. Blockhouse Bar, The Vault Pub, the IU Musical Arts Center, Auer Hall, Ford-Crawford Hall, Buskirk-Chumley Theater, and other venues showcase world-class jazz so that people like me can hear it almost nightly, at little or no cost. What music lover wouldn’t be enthralled?

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In Bloomington there are enough jazz lovers to make it a terrific place to have an audience.

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—Tom Walsh

When I first visited The Vault, I thought I was simply attending a casual student performance. Then I realized something subtle but riveting was happening behind the music, beyond the music — something nonverbal, non-auditory. Watching from the audience, I saw one man, whom I hadn’t yet met, and couldn’t yet name, who appeared to orchestrate something ineffable. I sensed a communal, easygoing bond, between and among faculty and students, a call and response underlying the notes themselves. 

I wanted to meet that man, to test my hypothesis that here in Bloomington jazz and jazz education are more than the sum of their parts. I wanted to hear his story of teaching, connecting, and transmitting culture, tradition, aspirations, possibilities, and paths for young musicians. So I introduced myself to Tom Walsh, who was gracious and generous with his time and his spirit. 

Aaron B. Cohen: I reached out to you because I sensed something special about this environment. Am I imagining things? 

Tom Walsh: One of our alums, Todd Coolman, a bassist who taught as an adjunct faculty member for us and is enjoying a prominent career, once told me that, even after teaching at many other schools, he found something special here. “It’s difficult to put into words, but there’s something that I’ve lived, and I can feel it. It’s tangible,” he said. Perhaps you sensed that combination of training, nurturing, and mentoring that I experienced as a student here myself and continuously work to foster. Todd described this as a kind of “safe space” to get your toolkit together. 

AC: As an internationally lauded musician, do you feel at all isolated in a corner of the Midwest?

TW: In Bloomington you’re not being pulled in a lot of different directions like in New York or Chicago, where students are always looking outside for a performance space. In Bloomington there are enough jazz lovers to make it a terrific place to have an audience. 

Bloomington is home to many venues, such as the Buskirk-Chumley Theater (above), where people can enjoy live jazz almost nightly, writes Aaron B. Cohen. “What music lover wouldn’t be enthralled?” | Photo by Limestone Post

AC: What are the key ingredients to this environment?

TW: This sense of extended community is a huge part of the jazz world, as is mentorship. My colleagues and I emphasize these values and practices in our program and our students benefit from it immensely. In addition to the deep musicianship they bring to their teaching and their gift for encouraging and inspiring students, every one of my colleagues also helps students connect with the professional world in tangible ways. I have stories about how each of our faculty members brings joy and connection to their interactions, which elevates everyone. This is a culture, a milieu. What happens at The Vault is part of this culture. 

AC: What are the roots of this culture? 

TW: In general, the collaborative learning environment, where people learn from each other in real time, derives from jazz history and tradition. Here at IU, it reflects the legacy of David Baker, a great pioneer of jazz education. This is the house that David Baker built. He was brilliant, awe inspiring. [Baker established the Jazz Department and was its chair from 1968 to 2013, when Tom became his successor.]

I first met David while I was in high school [in Louisville, Kentucky] and attended the Jamey Aebersold Summer Jazz Workshop for four years. This was a defining part of my development and my career. When he passed away in 2016, the word that came to mind was “encouragement.” He helped people do things they wouldn’t have done otherwise, expressed the belief that they could do something they didn’t know they could do. That encouragement resonated with generations of students.

AC: So, what distinguishes Tom Walsh?

TW: I was a student of this exceptional person and then started teaching at IU full time in the nineties. In 2010, the dean asked me to assist with administrative tasks in the department. I called myself the “Communications Coordinator,” in the sense of handling communications within the department. The faculty had expanded. There was organizing and administration to be done. I said, “I’m here to help.” 

When David passed away, the department lost its founder, and we grew as a department. I don’t see myself as a visionary; I see myself as a facilitator, who makes sure things happen. I’m focused on the details of the student and faculty experience at IU. I tend to all the processes and work to maintain a strong and healthy environment. My role is to ask the faculty for their ideas and figure out the best course of action.

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One of David Baker’s philosophies was that bebop is the lingua franca of jazz, the common language of educated musicians.

”

AC: How does technology figure in music and music education in this era of rapid change?

TW: Jazz has been wrapped up in technology from the beginning. The tension between technology and the human element has been there since 1917, when “Livery Stable Blues” became the first jazz record ever issued. The question is, how are you learning this music, from other live human beings in the room, or from a recording? A YouTube video? We know that Charlie Parker learned Lester Young solos from recordings, and that in an early Parker recording of “Body and Soul” he plays a phrase directly from Coleman Hawkins’s 1939 recording. 

Technology changes society and culture and what people do with their free time. There used to be more live music. Now that has shrunk, and there are fewer opportunities for someone to be a journeyman musician who’s gigging all the time. 

David Baker established the Jazz Department at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and was its chair from 1968 to 2013. Walsh says Baker was “a great pioneer of jazz education.” | Courtesy photo

Technology also controls the input side for most people. In the past, information was precious, you had your own record collection, your own books, your own library. You listened to those records over and over. Now information is ubiquitous; people have their subscriptions. The energy flow has been reversed, from having to seek out information to being inundated. 

The benefit of that is access. That’s good and bad. There’s the issue of distraction, of short attention spans. Now it’s so easy to dip in but it can be very superficial. You’re not internalizing. You have to become clever in how you navigate that, or risk being overwhelmed. 

Another potential problem is sameness. Jazz education has been criticized over the years for contributing to a homogenization of culture where everyone gets their information from the same sources. There’s the risk that everyone will sound the same when there’s conventional wisdom about who to listen to, and who to emulate (Parker, Coltrane, Rollins, Adderley, etc.). The criticism is, if we all go to the same well, we’re going to sound the same. 

AC: Are you concerned now about the impact of AI on how students learn?

TW: It’s a big unknown. I’ve only explored it a tiny bit myself. We haven’t incorporated AI into any of our classes. I think the only mention of it is in Natalie Boeyink’s syllabus for jazz history, which indicates that using AI-generated material is contrary to academic integrity. In our curriculum, we’re still focused on good, old-fashioned craftsmanship. But I wouldn’t be surprised if our students are experimenting with AI for all kinds of things. 

Still, technology is important in jazz education. Students go to the internet and are exposed to a wide variety of music at a young age, and that has contributed to a flourishing of interest. Now more schools have jazz ensembles than ever. So, although in some respects technology has fostered imitation and even appropriation, it also has contributed to a continuation of culture. 

AC: What is the essence of jazz culture?

TW: Jazz culture is about being a part of the jazz community and being connected to the history of the music. This is an art that is rooted in the African American experience. It’s important to connect with that in some way. It’s about collaboration and it’s about being creative. A lot of people get fixated on the individual and think it’s only about individual expression. That’s part of it, but this is ensemble music. You can’t do this without the members of your group. Within the group you have opportunities for individual expression, but everyone needs to support each other.

AC: So, what do you see as the essence of creativity?

TW: The essence of creativity, the essence of how anything evolves, is fusion. How does a new style emerge? It’s when people bring things together that haven’t been combined before. For example, in his book The World That Made New Orleans, Ned Sublette describes the unique blending of cultural influences from Spain, France, Africa, England, Cuba, and America. Jazz emerged out of that. 

AC: How does creativity mesh with tradition?

TW: The challenge in teaching is preservation versus innovation. My colleagues and I feel a responsibility to help our students be rooted in “The Tradition.” The phrase carries a lot of weight among jazz musicians. Particularly when older jazz musicians hear someone play, they want to know who their influences are, and how much they know the history of the music. That attitude still exists. 

One of Baker’s philosophies was that bebop is the lingua franca of jazz, the common language of educated musicians. The language of bebop shows up in all different styles. If you have that foundation, I do believe you’re ready for anything. At the same time there are contemporary styles of jazz, and jazz from all eras, that touch on pop music in ways that reflect the current time. For example, Quincy Jones had his bebop credentials and went on to be successful in pop. But then he lamented ten years ago that all the current people coming to him didn’t know any music theory. 

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Our alumni include Grammy Award winners, performers, teachers at all levels, and music writers for TV and movies. Some go into other careers.

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AC: What are the ingredients to a sound jazz education?

TW: We cultivate creativity and collaboration, and students learn every aspect of jazz performance and pedagogy. That includes improvisation, history, arranging, composition, ensemble playing, rhythm section techniques, private instrumental study, studio techniques, etc. It’s a holistic approach, which values oral tradition and learning by ear. It also values technical skills related to reading and writing music, theory, and being able to compose and arrange music. 

It’s critical for students to perform as part of an ensemble, and there are plenty of opportunities for them to do so, with three jazz Big Bands, the Latin Jazz Ensemble, and numerous combos. We encourage them to perform with their peers, like we’re hearing at The Vault as we speak. The key is to perform on a regular basis.

AC: What do your graduates wind up doing?

TW: Students are going to pursue myriad paths. Our alumni include Grammy Award winners, performers, teachers at all levels, and music writers for TV and movies. Some go into other careers. We need to prepare people to have a strong musical foundation so they can function at a high level in whatever it is they choose to do. It will be different for everyone. 

Our mission is to prepare students for careers and leadership roles in jazz and related fields. We equip them with the skills and experience to be successful, well-rounded musicians and creative jazz artists.

A sound jazz education, says Walsh, includes “improvisation, history, arranging, composition, ensemble playing, rhythm section techniques, private instrumental study, [and] studio techniques.” | Photo by Pavel Danilyuk

AC: What would you like to accomplish before you “graduate” from your role?

TW: I will likely make a recording of my own music. I have written several tunes that I would like to document. 

I’ve been thinking about projects aimed at preserving history. I’d like to create a David Baker digital archive. There are alumni who recorded his classes, and I think it would be cool to collect and digitize those recordings along with his interviews, teaching materials, compositions, recordings, etc. 

I would like to interview David Miller [trumpeter and veteran of the Bloomington jazz scene] to capture his stories. David is a jazz encyclopedia, particularly about the history of jazz in Bloomington over the past 60 years. Jamey Aebersold holds an incredible history in his house and in his memory. There are others who have passed away recently who had significant knowledge of jazz in this region or who are significant in the history of jazz at IU — Jack Ost, Roger Pemberton, Jerry Coker, Buddy Baker, in addition to David Baker. I would be interested in bringing all that history together. 

There are any number of things that are ongoing that are important to me. We started our own Summer Jazz Workshop for pre-college students last summer. This is very important and could grow. I manage that, and it takes a significant amount of time and effort. I also co-lead the Summer Saxophone Academy at the Jacobs School of Music with Otis Murphy. That has been very rewarding.

I have told my colleagues that I will step down from being department chair when I turn 65 in 2031. There comes a time to pass the torch!

AC: Any final insights?

TW: My advice to people is to become very good at what they do. Do your homework, be prepared, and at the same time be willing to take chances and jump into new situations and do the best you can. This is what improvisers do: You go on the bandstand and trust your preparation to carry you through while trying not to hold on to that too much. You have to let go in that moment. That’s how it works in general with life. Prepare, do your homework, and then once you get into a situation, trust your instincts.

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I wish everyone had the opportunity to sit in the middle of an orchestra.

”

The evening Tom and I spoke, he excused himself a few times to confer with the student performers. His spontaneous applause and shoutouts interrupted our conversation, which only confirmed for me this modest man’s priorities. His only concern about these freshmen and sophomore musicians was not about their chops — I couldn’t distinguish them from seasoned pros — but rather that they would end punctually. “That’s a very important lesson to learn as performers,” Tom said. As the clock struck 7:30, the band played the last strains of Johnny Come Lately, by Billy Strayhorn. 

The students were right on time.