Kids are talking, laughing, blowing into their horns, pounding their drums and otherwise cranking sound when Jason Moran steps into the band room.

Suddenly the place falls nearly silent.

Everyone stares at the tall, slender man wearing a hoodie and jeans and bearing an international reputation as a creative jazz pianist and MacArthur Fellowship winner.

"I'm Jason Moran — it's nice to meet you all," Moran says to the Kenwood Academy Jazz Band, which has been rehearsing for this moment for months.

The students know exactly why Moran has come to their school, on South Blackstone Avenue: He's going to rehearse with them for their concert together at one of America's most prominent arts complexes, the Kennedy Center, in Washington, on Friday.

"When he came in, I was like: 'Yeah, it's kind of a butterflies-in-your-stomach excitement,'" freshman trombonist Garrett Powell, 14, says later.

The stakes indeed are high. For everyone in this ensemble knows that nearly three years ago, the Kenwood Academy Jazz Band made history playing the world premiere of Moran's "Looks of a Lot" with him in Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center.

Kenwood's Journey

The jazz band at Chicago's Kenwood Academy gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play original compositions from internationally renowned composer/pianist Jason Moran at Chicago's Symphony Center. Follow their journey in this Tribune documentary.

The jazz band at Chicago's Kenwood Academy gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play original compositions from internationally renowned composer/pianist Jason Moran at Chicago's Symphony Center. Follow their journey in this Tribune documentary.

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Moran created the piece, in part, to address gun violence in the neighborhoods where many of these students live. But their triumph on the night of the performance was streaked with tragedy. For less than two weeks before the May 30, 2014 premiere, Kenwood guitarist Aaron Rushing was shot to death. He was three days short of his 16th birthday.

The Kenwood band heroically played on, sounding more formidable during the concert than in any of its rehearsals. Many musicians later said that Rushing was on their minds as they performed. Their work proved so compelling that Moran, who serves as the Kennedy Center's artistic director for jazz, was determined to bring the young musicians to national attention.

"I had such a kind of emotional ride working on this piece with the students here," says Moran after the first rehearsal for the Kennedy Center concert.

"You know, it's one thing to go from the South Side to Chicago Symphony Center. But what if we went all the way to D.C.?"

Kenwood bandleader Gerald Powell (father of Garrett Powell) began preparing the students during winter break, knowing that whatever pressures existed during the Symphony Center premiere would only be heightened at the Kennedy Center. And because most members of the 2014 band had graduated from Kenwood, Gerald Powell would be training a largely new group of musicians for a daunting task that he considers a privilege.

"It's a great opportunity for them — it's no way in the world I could let that go by," says Powell, a respected Chicago jazz musician.

"I've never been to the Kennedy Center, let alone performed in it, and so it's a big event for myself as well."

When Moran cues the young musicians to begin playing, it's clear that the students know the score. They sound big and brawny in thunderous passages, sensitive in lyrical ones.

"It's not as hard as I thought it would be, but it's still a challenge to play it," says reedist Jarrett Crenshaw, 18, a senior.

"It's quite easy once you get used to it," adds drummer Nairobi Tribble, 17, a senior.

Then again, continues Tribble, "Doing that in front of that many people, in front of Jason Moran, is like a little on the edge."

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Trombonist Alyssa Younger, 18, counts herself lucky that she played the piece three years ago and gets another shot at it now.

"I sort of kind of feel old, because I was a freshman when I did it, and it was a new thing," says Younger.

"Last time I didn't too much care because I was a freshman. … But now it's like that was a really big thing!

"I put it on college applications and stuff like that. Because I'm just now figuring out that Orchestra (Hall) is like a really big place.

"Actually, my mom told me the Kennedy Center is even bigger … so now it's just sinking in to me that we're actually going to do it."

Bandleader Powell believes that no high school student could fully comprehend the impact of this experience. The value of rehearsing an evening-length work for months, collaborating with a charismatic jazz musician and performing alongside him in a revered concert space "won't hit them until their mid-20s," Powell says.

But the experience can be transformative. For quite apart from the demands of performing this music, these students could learn a great deal about transcending obstacles.

There are "things that students here in Chicago go through that maybe other students in other areas don't have to deal with," says bandleader Powell, referring to Chicago's much-documented violence.

"But they still overcome. They still overcome."

Moran references these challenges starting with the title of the piece, which he drew from a video of Chicago rapper Lil Durk, who noticed police swarming a concert of his and observed, "Looks of a lot of blues" (meaning lights on squad cars).

But Moran's opus stretches well beyond this theme, messages of hope, perseverance and vindication radiating through much of the work. Toward the end, Moran's score quotes Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance" March No. 1 — the ubiquitous graduation march — as if to send these students on to future successes.

"What I hope happens in Washington is that the kids feel like they earned this," says Moran. "And that they have fun doing it, and that they never forget it.

"And I hope that this lasts as a real marker in their timelines.

"Fifteen years from now, if I run into one of them at a jazz festival or a restaurant, then they'll say: 'You know, let's talk about that piece.' I kind of hope that for them."

As for those on the other side of the footlights, "I hope the audience starts to understand the importance and the value in the youth," says Moran.

"I think many times people have talked only about the problems without ever getting their hands wet. So they're talking about this from some platform.

"But they have never gotten down here on the soil."

With "Looks of a Lot," Moran, Powell, colleague Bethany Pickens and students are doing much more than talking about social issues from a safe distance.

They're taking action, through music.

Listeners at the Kennedy Center are about to find out what they have to say.

Howard Reich is a Tribune critic.

hreich@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @howardreich

To find videos, photo galleries and complete Kenwood coverage, go to www.chicagotribune.com/kenwoodjazz

RELATED STORIES:

Part One: Kenwood jazz band journeys to Symphony Center stage

Part Two: Kenwood band members grieve for slain guitarist, 15

Part Three: Voices of Kenwood: Taking the stage

 

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