Carolina Weatherall

Last Saturday, Brunswick residents, faculty and students gathered at Studzinski Recital Hall for the College’s two-piano jazz duo concert. The performance featured Scott Martin, Bowdoin’s new jazz and pop piano instructor, and Tom Porter, a writer and multimedia producer from the Office of Communications and Public Affairs, on the titular pianos.

After coming across Porter practicing piano in Gibson Hall, Martin decided that he wanted to organize the concert.

“I heard [Porter] in the practice room in Gibson Hall one day, and I was like, ‘Who’s that?’” Martin told the audience in his introduction. “The next time I heard him, I barged in and said, ‘Hey, you sound great. Let’s jam.’”

Michele Reid-Vasquez, associate professor of Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx studies and Africana studies, also performed vocals for most of the concert. Martin and Reid-Vasquez had met during their faculty orientation last year and connected quickly over their shared love of music.

“I studied music a long time ago and put it aside to become a historian, which I love doing,” Reid-Vasquez said. “But I kept feeling [like] I was missing that other kind of creative outlet. And so [when] I got here, I decided music was going to happen.… We’re running songs I hadn’t sung in 20 years. We’re just kindred spirits that way.”

The concert featured guests Kate Campbell-Straus, the director of jazz ensembles and lecturer in music, and Frank Mauceri, the chair of the music department, both of them on tenor saxophone. Martin noted that jazz particularly builds a strong community. Since almost every jazz musician knows the genre’s standards, collaboration is significantly easier.

“I could go anywhere in the world and probably play like a dozen songs with any jazz musician and know what he’s supposed to be [playing],” Martin said. “Anybody who is interested in that music, there’s a common ground for them to play.”

The concert proposed interactive and improvisational songs that encouraged the audience to sing or clap along with the music. Porter even wrote some lyrics centered around Maine’s Route One highway, which runs through Brunswick, as a play on the jazz standard “Route 66.”

“Jazz brings that musical personality and conversation that happens much more than it does in other forms of music,” Porter said. “When you sit down, it’s kind of like anything can happen.”

The songs chosen for the program were a mixture of English and Spanish jazz, with the Spanish songs chosen by Reid-Vasquez. Many of these songs were the ones the audience sang along to.

“When we ran a few tunes in rehearsal, I thought, ‘You know what, if I’m going to sing, then I need to sing the music that I love,’” Reid-Vasquez said. “For me, it was really about honoring heritage and my areas of expertise and bringing an additional piece to the musical element for the night.”

Martin also announced that The Abbey in Brunswick would be hosting jazz brunches starting this coming Sunday. Martin, who was the prime organizer for these brunches, bought and tuned a piano from Facebook Marketplace, and he spoke with the owners of the restaurant about using the space for both Brunswick and Bowdoin communities to bond over jazz.

“I want it to be the kind of thing that people can come in, especially the students in the jazz program,” Martin said. “When I did [jazz sessions] year after year in Boulder [Colo.], I had people come in as eighth graders, and now they’re grad school music majors.”

Martin hopes to make jazz performances a fall tradition. He particularly enjoyed the interdisciplinary nature of this performance and how it connected not only professors across different disciplines, but faculty and staff as well.

“I’d like to do [a concert] every year in the fall,” Martin said. “Maybe not the exact same [performers], but something where I put people together.… There’s so many great people here, and it’s nice to be collaborating.”

Students and community members alike enjoyed the performance. Attendee Dennis Lemieux pointed out Reid-Vasquez’s performance as a highlight of the concert.

“[Reid-Vasquez] was just incredible,” Lemieux said. “[The concert] was top-notch.… [My wife and I] live in Brunswick, and we always enjoy events here. I had no expectations, but I was frankly blown away by how good the performance was.”

Christine Ramos ’25, who ushered the event, enjoyed the lightheartedness of the performances.

“I love how playful the musicians were,” Ramos said. “[They were] just really inviting.… I just love the overall camaraderie. Once everyone’s listening, they’re kind of connected. They’re in tune, so it reminds people that we’re our own people but still part of a community.”