This Thursday marks the 11th return of Jazz4Justice, a beloved local partnership between VCUArts and the Greater Richmond Bar Foundation. The benefit concert features performances from VCU jazz students to raise money for pro bono legal services and jazz scholarships. And for the second year in a row, they’re continuing a new tradition: bringing in a guest artist to work directly with students leading up to the event.

Performing alongside the VCU Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra and the Jazz4Justice Scholarship Sextet this year is Michael Philip Mossman, a celebrated trumpeter, composer and arranger, as well as an educator at Queens College and Julliard.

I caught up with Mossman and Taylor Barnett, VCU’s director of jazz studies, to learn more about their plans for the show and how music can bring us all together.

Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and style.

Annie Parnell: This year's Jazz4Justice concert is on March 6. What can listeners expect to hear?

Taylor Barnett: We're going to have two of our groups playing from VCU. We have the VCU Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra as well as the Jazz4Justice Scholarship Sextet, which is a group of students that are recipients of last year's Jazz4Justice concert proceeds, and then we are very excited to have our special guest — Michael Philip Mossman, trumpeter and writer-arranger — joining the groups.
 
When I approached the director of our Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, Dimitrije Vayiljhvic, and asked him who he had in mind on his dream list of guest artists to bring in for the group, the first person he brought up was Michael. They've played a few of his charts in the past, and his reputation as one of the top trumpeters in and writers in this genre preceded him.

So we reached out, and he said, “Yes,” and that was that!

Michael Philip Mossman: Looking forward to it! There are more Afro-Latin jazz groups being hosted at different universities. Now that this is becoming much more common, people are focusing on it. They're interested in not only the musical content, but also the cultural content and the historical content. There’s a lot of culture and a lot of history. It's a lot of fun.

TB: And I just want to make sure to give a shout out and props to the Greater Richmond Bar Foundation — they're our community partner. They raise funds and support for pro bono legal services in our community. This is going to be our 11th year, putting on this concert with them, raising funds to help people in need in our community, as well as raising money for jazz scholarships.
 
What has the rehearsal process been like so far?

MPM: I've sent a bunch of charts! Right now I'm in Connecticut, but I imagine they've been working hard.

TB: Yeah, they've been going through those and selecting the ones that show off the group the best and work together to make a nice set of music. The students are all preparing that music, and then Michael, we’ll bring him down the week of the concert.

So we'll have a couple days of rehearsal, and doing some clinics and master classes, working both with our trumpet students as well as our arranging class.

MPM: I love it when students ask questions, when they've done their own homework and have specific things [to ask about]. Whether it's about the music, whether it's about anything specific to arranging and composing, a right question could change your life. If you ask the right question at the right time, you can get some information that can really set you on a good path.

Do you have a favorite question that a student has asked you?

MPM: The questions that a lot of people, of course, ask are, “How do you achieve some success as a performer?” “How'd you get started with arranging? What was it like playing with Dizzy Gillespie?” you know,

They could be very technical questions, or they could be very broad questions, and both are very valuable in the right moment. You get the right information, it can really save you from reinventing the wheel.

Michael, you've had this incredible career playing with artists like Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakey, and you've been working in jazz since you were 17 — which is around the age of some of the members of this undergraduate group. Can you share with us a piece of music or an experience in music that made an impact on you around that time?

MPM: Well, I mean, I came from a rather backward kind of community, I should say, called “the armpit of Pennsylvania.” [laughs]

There wasn't a lot of culture, but there was a radio station. Temple University had a jazz radio station, and I didn't even know the music was called jazz, to tell you the truth. I was playing the trumpet and was going around the radio looking for music that had trumpet in it. And I that's how I found jazz, I think.

I was hearing names, and then as I'd hear a name, I’d hear some music I liked, and then I’d go to record stores, when we still had record stores, and start looking for these people.

A friend of mine said, “Hey, there's a jazz workshop in a nearby town” — Wilmington, Delaware. It was not too far from where I lived. And the thing that really set me off is I met a bunch of New York professional players who came down for this clinic, some of whom wound up becoming very close friends.

Some — like Sir Roland Hanna, the great pianist — we wound up teaching with each other at Queens College. And Don Sebesky, who was also there, became my arranging teacher privately when I moved to New York.

So I would say that really the seminal thing that really changed my life, as far as music, was attending the first exposure I ever had to real serious musicians, professional musicians who were who are working, the way the music sounded and the way they presented themselves, and also just the way they worked with one another.

I mean, Joe Chambers was one of that group, a great drummer. Wayne Andre, a great trombonist, was there. Marvin Stamm, a great jazz and studio trumpet player, was there and gave me some real hard advice that it was time for me to get serious about music if I wanted to do it. So I would say that was a real game changer.
 
Once I got to New York I started meeting these people that I had heard on records as a kid, and started seeing them as people — not just names and sounds, but actually as people. I'd say that that was really very, very important.

You start to feel like you're part of a community of people. It's not just chords and scales and “ta, ta, ta,” it’s also about people and why they sound the way they do, and where their music comes from.

That's interesting — you hear that adage, “Never meet your heroes.” But from what you're saying, it sounds like meeting that community of people really changed it for you, and really brought you into a collective.

MPM: I mean, most of the musicians I know, the ones I met in New York and elsewhere, they're not from there. They all came from someplace else. They're all like me, coming from very different backgrounds, of course, but they all come together.

And even now, as a teacher, I see this. You just don't know what it is that that's transcendent, that brings all these people together, regardless of where they come from. I just heard a kid today playing drums, who's from Amish country in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and this cat’s swinging on the drums, and he has a bowl haircut, like Mennonites do.

I’m like, “OK, I got a swinging Mennonite here!”

We're not just here to be the same. We appreciate, and we celebrate each other's differences, because it's interesting. But there is this meeting place, these tunes and songs and traditions and blues, and so many things that were gifted to us by previous generations. That's our meeting place. We meet there, but we also retain some of our own individual music that keeps bringing people in, rather than trying to keep people out.

You see the relevance that has around the world, even in times of warfare, where cultures and countries are fighting with one another. It's so absurd that we have these differences. But at the same time, you see the real truth is that people are constantly reaching out to one another. They're trying to embrace each other in ways that are often inexplicable, but I think it represents a greater truth.

You’ve also had this great career as an educator at Juilliard, as the director of jazz studies at Queens College, and you also previously directed the Blue Note “young lions” ensemble, Out of the Blue.

What advice do you find yourself offering to young musicians?
 
MPM: Well, I mean, the first thing, of course, is to learn how to play. I mean, playing is the great equalizer, playing is the reason why we're all here. We all want to play. But as I’ve told all my students, you're not going to just make a living playing. Even the greatest musicians don't make a living just playing.

You’re going to have to learn how to write. You're going to learn how to learn how to produce. You may have to learn how to direct bands. There might be some obscure niche market of publishing. Learning how to be an effective teacher is very important, expanding your understanding of different, more specific forms of music, learning how to write for orchestra, learning how to do fusions of jazz with classical music, write for larger ensembles or for film.

I always tell people, if you want to play, you have to kind of earn the right to play, and it may not be by playing. There's many, many different pathways. And I think that as long as students understand that everybody trying to get through the same door at the same time is not a great idea, and certainly not to look at other people to decide what success means, to define success.

Because some people, success means being able to play the local corner bar and then go fishing all week. For some people, having a family and being home and sitting around the dinner table every night is the picture of success. For some people, they just want to play music and live in a basement in Manhattan. That's for you to decide.

But at some point, you have to figure out what what's important to you, and not have other people tell you what's supposed to be important to you. 

One of the things we’ve talked about with Jazz4Justice is that the presence of the guest artist creates this beautiful, two-sided learning relationship. Is there anything that you've learned from students you've worked with?

MPM: [laughs] All the time. I mean, I've been lucky. A lot of my students are old already, because I've been teaching for a long time. Some of my students are grizzled old veterans at this point. When I first started teaching, I was much more hidebound, trying to be a teacher. And I started to realize pretty soon that that was a bad idea.

I always tell students, there's a difference between someone who has 30 years of experience teaching, and someone who has one year of experience teaching and just repeated it 30 times. You’re not changing if you're not doing your own homework, if you're not reevaluating what you do based on the feedback from your students.

And sometimes I'll have a student who will do some writing, and I'll look at it first and say, “No, no.” Then I start looking at it, and it’s like, “Well, wait a minute. Actually, let me check this out, I never thought about that.” And then suddenly you look at things in a different way.

I remember one time at Queens College, I had a kid from Spain who was misspelling C minor 7th all the time. It's like, how could you not understand how to spell a simple chord like that? But then I heard this kid play, and he was a flamenco player, and his concept of what C minor was coming from a completely different place, and he couldn't understand why I was rejecting what he was saying.

Of course, he didn't understand the language I was trying to teach him, but I also didn't understand the language that he was familiar with. It’s understanding that different people are coming into the jazz world with a different background, and they may not be doing what you need them to do for that particular class or that particular lesson, but what's their perspective, and what are they bringing?

Maybe instead of just rejecting that and just leaving it there, try talking about why that's that way, and what that could lead to, what that means.

So I think a short answer to your question is, “yeah,” especially when I'm around some of these young phenoms. Some of them are really quite amazing, and sometimes they're still knuckleheads too, you know, they have one area that's really great, and they just don't get it elsewhere. So I look at teaching as being a facilitator of a community.

People coming from all these different backgrounds, coming together in pursuit of music that brings them together, and in pursuit of justice itself.

TB: Yeah, absolutely. I think at this time in our world and in our country, as much as any time, it's necessary and encouraging to have people with a like mind and a sense of uplifting and meeting needs do so by welcoming and celebrating all kinds of ethnic and cultural influences.

And so that's why I think having the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra and having an artist such as Michael Philip Mossman down is really a perfect fit for this, because it shows that this music and this way of being is open and welcoming and allows people to be themselves, while also letting other people be themselves.

MPM: That was beautiful. I think that's exactly it. I think, in a time where we find so much polarization, this is a place where we can meet and enjoy each other, you know, and find real common ground. We can agree where the beat is, we can agree where the pitch is, and we can try to play stylistically together, even If we disagree about everything else.

And I think that's even more important, ever more important, than it has been.

The 11th annual Jazz4Justice benefit concert will be held on Thursday night at 7:30 at the Singleton Center.