Branker '80 keeps the beat as jazz professor, composer

There is a jazz term that professor Tony Branker '80 defined for his students during a recent class that describes the creation of a brand-new melody over an existing harmonic foundation.

Like that technique, Branker adds a dose of his own animation and energy to the academic syllabus of MUS 209/AAS 209: Introduction to Jazz.

"Clap along. Feel the groove," Branker urges his class as one of his students demonstrates a rhythm on the piano. "Anyone want to sing?"

Even before he begins teaching, the casual way Branker walks into his room indicates an intimate relationship with his students — a relationship that has transformed the way many of them experience music.

Branker, who was recently promoted to senior lecturer, returned to the University at the beginning of last week after undergoing brain surgery for abnormal blood circulation between his arteries and veins. He collapsed after a rehearsal of one of the University's jazz ensembles, which he conducts, during the last week of September.

He was greeted on his first day back in class by a room full of students eager to experience his famed enthusiasm.

"The kind of dynamism he brings to the lecture — people really gravitate towards him, and therefore towards the material," said Stephanie Charros, a preceptor in Branker's course. "Jazz can speak for itself . . . but with Tony I can really see he has a talent to communicate things."

In MUS 209 — which aims to help students appreciate jazz in its historical and cultural context — Branker brings together both music afficionados and students with virtually no musical experience. But despite the varied backgrounds of his students, Branker's twin passions for jazz and teaching hold the course together.

"Instead of just presenting the material, I'm trying to think as a student coming into the class with no background," he said. "I want to reach the student and hopefully satisfy his curiosity on some level."

He sparked the curiosity of Kiego Hirakawa '00, who enrolled in MUS 209 this year after sitting in on the class through the entire semester when he was a freshman.

"Branker is a very animated character," Hirakawa said. "And the message he's trying to convey is to love the spirit of jazz. Just being in his class, you feel the spirit he's trying to convey."

Leading the jazz ensembles, Branker is able to develop an even more personal relationship with his students, tailoring his style to help each student become sensitive to even the most subtle nuances of the music.

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When he joined a jazz ensemble as a freshman, Hirakawa said he disliked Branker at first because he felt singled out.

"For me personally, the rhythm concept was something I had to develop," Hirakawa said. "[Branker] really made sure I got everything right, even if it meant stopping the band."

But that initial dislike turned into respect as Hirakawa realized that Branker's demanding style stemmed from his sensitivity to the music and his desire to stay true to each composer's original intentions.

"I want to expose them to a wide range of styles and approaches, teach them how to improvise and be expressive and have them love jazz as much as I do," Branker said.

As an undergraduate at Princeton, Branker's love for jazz led him to switch his major from math to music — and eventually landed him in graduate school at the University of Miami, where he received a masters degree in jazz pedagogy.

He was recently named musical director of the Spirit of Jazz Ensemble, with which he performs regularly at the Sweet Basil jazz club in New York. The group has appeared at various concert halls and festivals in the United States and abroad.

Branker also composes his own work, and several of his pieces have been performed and published.

And yet, despite Branker's wide range of experience as a performer and composer, he is most animated when talking about his teaching.

"Teaching is such an incredibly rewarding experience for me," he said. "The six months that I was on medical leave and not able to teach in any environment was very, very difficult. I feel, I guess, so passionately about this music."

"Just the experience of being able to impart whatever information I may have — just being able to interact is such a wonderful experience," Branker said. "I knew from the time that I was 11 or 12 years old that I wanted to be a teacher, when I tutored someone in math and loved it."

While a student at Princeton, one of Branker's ambitions was to someday return to the University to develop its jazz program. And when the opportunity to teach at Princeton presented itself in 1989, he could not turn it down.

"It's also nice coming back to the institution you attended," he added, "to feel like you're giving something back. I'm just not sure what."

But his students do. While attending a jazz conference in Chicago three years ago, Branker ran into one of his former MUS 209 students who had taken an internship with a record company. "He had no background," Branker recalled, "but he said, 'Thanks for the opportunity of teaching me how to listen.' "