Jazz and Commercial Music soiree shares Setnor students’ unique sound with a crowd

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In a small, dimly-lit studio, Syracuse University freshman Sofia Rose Elder smiled at Professor Marianne Solivan as they sang Elder’s father’s favorite song – “Midnight in Harlem” by Tedeschi Trucks Band – for a room full of smiling jazz musicians.

“One of the key memories from my childhood was driving in Long Island to a beach and my dad would roll the windows down and play it,” Elder said. “I just have super fond memories with this song and I wanted to sing something with (Solivan).”

Nine musicians in SU’s Setnor School of Music’s Jazz and Commercial Music (JCM) ensembles gathered at Solivan’s studio to perform for an audience of about 20 people in the JCM Vocal Soirée, a culmination of their semester’s work.

The event was set up to resemble a small nightclub, Solivan said, with a grand piano taking up half of the studio’s space. The crowd, mostly composed of other music students, chatted about eighth notes and cheered each other on as friends before and between performances.

This year, sophomore CC Cosenza performed in her fourth Vocal Soirée with the group. She said she has gotten better with each performance and loves hearing her friends sing at the event.

“I’m mostly proud of all of my classmates. These are some of my best friends in the music school and I’m just so proud of how this studio sounds,” Cosenza said. “We all have such a unique sound, and I think that seeing that in such an intimate space like this, it’s just special. It reminds me of how grateful I am to be part of a community that’s just so talented.”

The Setnor School of Music is a very small part of SU’s campus, consisting of approximately 300 students. The JCM applied area only has about 50 students, Solivan said. They form a close-knit community, and their camaraderie is what drew Solivan to SU.

“It is always important, as musicians, to be able to have that kind of closeness so that we can try things together, fail at things together, be vulnerable together and to be able to express ourselves,” Solivan said.

Students performed songs like “Valentine” by Laufey and “It’s Like Reaching for The Moon” by Billie Holiday. Their song selection process is a team effort between Solivan and the students. Each party holds a veto power during the process, which creates a personalized repertoire.

Cosenza said they choose songs the singers love listening to and are originally performed by musicians who inspire them.

“I’m always proud to be around people that genuinely love what they do to the capacity that we do in that room,” Elder said. “As a singer, it just makes you want to choose harder music and perform better and practice more when you’re surrounded by such incredibly talented individuals.”

Finals week is different for music students, Solivan said. The students are bombarded with performances, but they have been steadily rehearsing the repertoire for eight weeks. By the time the finals week performances arrive, the musicians are comfortable with their material, unlike non-music students who may be scrambling for last-minute study sessions.

Still, the students don’t have to be perfect during their performance. A self-proclaimed performing artist first, Solivan imparts a message of growth to her students. Music and arts need to be “alive” in the moment, she said, which means they can always grow in shape and change.

“I personally like to instill a feeling that everything’s a work in progress. There is no ‘perfection,’ there is no ‘finished’ in music and in art. So this is a work-in-progress,” Solivan said. “Everything we do tonight we will keep working on. And the act of performance is, in itself, a transformative experience.”

The singers in the audience punctuated every performance with applause and snaps. They nodded their heads to the beat of the songs and hollered when the singers reached high notes or completed intricate riffs.

“If I leave any sort of parts of me in you, it’s that you sang your asses off from someplace that wasn’t about school, and it wasn’t about notes, and it wasn’t about what’s right or wrong,” Solivan said to her singers at the end of the soirée. “It was your own licks, your own runs, your own ideas, your own arrangements, all your own things. It’s scary. But don’t be scared.”