July 7 ,
2005
Trumpet player ready for trip across the pond
By Annie Tasker, Herald Times
Sometimes you have to speak Finnish to play the trumpet.
And IU's Jackie Coleman doesn't have long to learn how to ask for the bathroom. She's headed to Finland's Pori Jazz Festival Tuesday with Sisters in Jazz Collegiate All-Stars as one of three horn players. She's excited.
"It'll be my first time out of the country," she says. That's not to say her trumpet hasn't seen the inside of an overhead compartment a time or two.
Coleman's traveled with Sisters in Jazz to Long Beach, Calif. - where they played for Herbie Hancock - and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., for the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival.
She'll have to get used to long commutes if she's planning to come back to her Indianapolis home for Christmas. Coleman starts at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles this fall, where she'll work toward her masters in jazz trumpet. During her stint on the West Coast, she wants to pursue transcribing, arranging and writing music, interests she dabbled in while studying with School of Music jazz professor Pat Harbison.
Coleman was introduced to the trumpet when her brother played it in middle school band. High school came, and his trumpet playing went. When Coleman said she was interested in playing for middle school band herself, her parents said it was trumpet or bust because they didn't want to buy another instrument.
When she was first learning to play, her teacher told her to get a feel for the instrument by listening to any trumpet recordings she could get her hands on. Coleman went to the library and checked out some Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie CDs. "I thought, wow, this is cool music," says Coleman. "I want to do that someday."
She didn't put that plan into action until her second year at IU. Coleman started out a biology major, but after a year of playing with local jazz combos, she decided a trumpet major was more her speed. "I decided I'd be happier," she says.
She played in Bloomington band The Bill Chase Jazz Experiment and with some jazz combos around town. These days, she plays Fridays and Saturdays at Indy's Malibu Grill with jazz singer and pianist Courtney Gasque.
Don't worry about Coleman. The Sisters in Jazz drummer speaks Finnish. She'll find the bathroom.
NAME: Jackie Coleman
AGE: 22
HOMETOWN: Indianapolis
INSTRUMENT: Jazz trumpet
INFLUENCES: Freddie Hubbard, Nicholas Payton
IN THE CD PLAYER: Funk band Soulize
