{"id":16036,"date":"2018-06-13T09:00:48","date_gmt":"2018-06-13T16:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=16036"},"modified":"2018-06-12T10:42:27","modified_gmt":"2018-06-12T17:42:27","slug":"former-camosun-student-focuses-on-introspective-side-of-jazz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2018\/06\/13\/former-camosun-student-focuses-on-introspective-side-of-jazz\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Camosun student focuses on introspective side of jazz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephen Menold dropped out of Camosun\u2019s Jazz Studies program in April 2013 with just one credit standing between him and a diploma, but he felt the pull of a city\u2014Montreal\u2014with a stronger arts culture than Victoria\u2019s, and he just couldn\u2019t resist any longer.\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cI just had to expand my universe,\u201d says Menold. \u201cMy idea was actually just to get out and explore and find my own way, and I felt like if I didn\u2019t leave then, I wouldn\u2019t; I had to just jump and go for it.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Menold has since harnessed the sights and sounds of that city\u2019s culture, as well as heavy influences from the music of Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk, into a career in jazz. Menold says he has always been attracted more to the emotional side of music than to its intellectual side.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Former Camosun Jazz Studies student Stephen Menold is returning to Victoria to play a show on June 16 (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI find a huge, glaring problem with modern jazz today is that with colleges and universities taking it as an art form, they deconstruct it to the point of taking the emotion out of it,\u201d he says. \u201cJust looking at the notes and looking at the mathematics, I find a lot of modern players\u2026 I\u2019m not trying to throw shade or start any battles, but it seems like there\u2019s a much larger push for being compositionally creative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Menold says another problem is that many people are looking outside themselves for material.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t look inwards first you\u2019re not going to have anything to say,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

As an example of looking to the external the way some musicians do, Menold jokes about writing a tune about a black hole in outer space.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIs your life not interesting enough? I guess what I\u2019m trying to say is I write from more of a personal experience,\u201d he says. \u201cSay something interesting about you. I don\u2019t want to learn about the cosmos, I want to see what makes you tick, what makes the artist think and feel. That\u2019s more of a universal experience\u2014the human emotion\u2026 Putting your own thoughts into the emotion as opposed to just abstract thought makes more of a global feeling, and, I think, that\u2019s what makes jazz accessible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephen Menold Quartet
\n8 pm Saturday, June 16
\n$15, Hermann\u2019s Jazz Club
\nhermannsjazz.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen Menold dropped out of Camosun\u2019s Jazz Studies program in April 2013 with just one credit standing between him and a diploma, but he felt the pull of a city\u2014Montreal\u2014with a stronger arts culture than Victoria\u2019s, and he just couldn\u2019t resist any longer.\u00a0 \u201cI just had to expand my universe,\u201d says Menold. \u201cMy idea was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,212],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-june-13-2018"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16038,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16036\/revisions\/16038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}