Lawrence Today magazine, Fall 2003
Fred Sturm, ’73, professor of music, has been named the recipient of the 2003 ASCAP/IAJE Commission in Honor of Quincy Jones for Established Jazz Composers of International Prominence.
The commission, widely considered the world’s most prestigious jazz composition award for established composers, is presented by the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) in cooperation with the International Association of Jazz Educators.
Sturm, director of jazz studies and improvisational music at the Lawrence Conservatory of Music, will write a new composition in the coming months and conduct its premiere performance by an all-star ensemble of jazz musicians next January at the 2004 IAJE Conference in New York City. The commission prize includes a cash award of $7,500.
“The commission comes with no strings attached,” says Sturm. “It’s basically anything goes. It will be created completely from scratch, but I’m hoping to write something that is very cutting edge.”
In addition to his ASCAP jazz commission, Sturm was recently selected to work on a pair of upcoming recording projects.
In September, he travels to Frankfurt, Germany, where he will serve as arranger/conductor for the recording of “Bodacious Cowboys: 3 Decades of Steely Dan,” for which he will conduct the Hessischer Rundfunk Jazz Band. Next March, the Lawrence University Jazz Ensemble will perform the same program in a campus concert.
Sturm also will serve as arranger/conductor for the 2004 BMG/Arista Records release of Brazilian pianist, singer, and composer Eliane Elias. In addition to arranging all the works on the Elias project, Sturm will travel to London in November to conduct the London Symphony in a recording of the CD’s orchestral components.
“Any of these three projects alone would be cause for celebration,” Sturm says. “Put all three together, and you have a combination of sheer exhilaration and terror. If I had the luxury of spreading these projects out over a period of a couple of years, that would be heaven, but when the phone rings, and you’re asked to contribute, you say ‘Yes!’”