“Jazz is a complete lifestyle—something that you feel, something that you live,” Ray Brown, the famous American jazz bassist, once said, and Jeff McMillan doesn’t think he could say it any better. Author of Delightfulee: The Life and Music of Lee Morgan and a freelance jazz writer, McMillan GSN’00 teamed with Rutgers professors Lewis Porter, Henry Martin, and John Howland in 2011 to form the Rutgers Jazz M.A. (Master of Arts) Alumni group, a chartered organization of the Rutgers University Alumni Association. “We are committed to educating the world about jazz, its history, and its sound,” says McMillan, who serves as its president.
The group’s alumni network includes well-known members such as tenor saxophonist Leo Johnson NCAS’99, GSN’05, a leading musician in the Newark jazz scene who has researched the city’s jazz history; jazz pianist and Louis Armstrong aficionado Ricky Riccardi RC’04, GSN’05, author of What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong’s Later Years; and Todd Bryant Weeks GSN’04, jazz historian and author of Luck’s in My Corner: The Life and Music of Hot Lips Page.
The jazz M.A. program was created in 1997 and is closely associated with the acclaimed Institute of Jazz Studies on the Newark Campus. “It was time to see where all our alumni are and what they’ve accomplished,” says McMillan about the group’s founding. The members take advantage of one another’s strengths and connections by sharing success stories, promoting music and research, trading leads on jobs, and drawing on one another as they continue the “quest to keep jazz and its history alive and relevant.”
— Shannon Rossman Allen
All graduates of the jazz M.A. program are welcome to get involved. Visit Ralumni.com/organizations for McMillan’s contact information.