Jazz Review Features Original Student Music
Beat, Bop and Box Merges Jazz with America’s Favorite Pastime
 

[April 25, 2018] 

LINCOLN 

The Lincoln College Jazz Studies program will present “Beat Bop and Box” Thursday and Friday, April 26-27. The final Jazz Revue of the school year pays tribute to both American Jazz and the heyday of baseball as America’s favorite pastime.

The revue will also feature the original music of two Lincoln College jazz studies students, Christian Lloyd and Sean Sheldon. Sheldon’s composition, “Take a Breath” is fusion of jazz and hip hop, featuring his own vocal and saxophone performance. He dedicates the song to gun violence survivor students in Parkland, FL, as well as in his own community.

LISTEN TO CHRISTIAN LLOYD NOW

Lloyd will play the trombone for his instrumental composition, “Dominican Nights,” which celebrates his Caribbean roots.

“In many ways, this show is the culmination of the journey our students have been on this past years, as they progress from performing classic jazz compositions to now producing their own original works,” said Denise La Grassa, lead faculty for the Jazz Studies program at Lincoln College. “At the same time, this will be a celebration of two great American institutions, Jazz and Baseball.”

HEAR SEAN SHELDON'S PERFORMANCE HERE

This is the second original jazz revue show of the school year and features music from the Hard Bop era and original music by Lincoln College Jazz Studies majors.

The show will also feature mixed media inserts focused on jazz and baseball (the three NYC baseball teams in the league during the 1950s) and similarities between baseball and jazz, "the two best friends America ever had." Like jazz, baseball is a team effort with swing, hits and runs and unexpected twists and turns coupled with winning collaborative outcomes, La Grassa explained.

Both baseball and jazz were the center points of pastime activity in America when the divisions of race, were erased.

The show will be at 7:30 p.m. both Thursday and Friday on the main stage of the Lincoln College Johnston Center for Performing Arts.

The revue is an original production written by students Aja Stokes-Weston, Adam Reinhardt, Chaquaire McDaniel and Lewis Funches.

Lloyd is a Chicago native who grew up absorbing both jazz and hip-hop.

“My grandmother loved jazz music with a passion,” he said. “Her favorite was John Coltrane, and she would play his music all the time.”

The trombonist/singer/ songwriter would also repeatedly hear his grandmother’s J.J. Johnson and Al Grey records. He says both made a huge impression on him at a young age because they were trombone players, and because each had his own sound.

Sean Sheldon was born and raised in Calumet City, and has led his own childhood band, producing and writing songs, since sixth grade. He plays guitar and has been playing saxophone since attending Thornton Fractional North High School. He lost his brother when he was 16, and a few friends to street violence during his freshman and sophomore years – experiences that inform his writing.

Sean’s musical tastes and influences are eclectic, ranging from jazz, metal music by Slip Knot and hip-hop/rap artists MF Doom and Madlib.

[Mark Gordon
Public Relations and Media Manager
Lincoln College]