Search for thriving jazz scene led to U.S.

Monday, Dec. 4, 2006 | 7:23 a.m.

'Once I play, they'll shut up,' says the young jazz bassist of her skeptics

Vanessa McGowan is a killer jazz bassist. Never mind that she just won an international collegiate honor or that she has performed with many jazz greats while playing in New Zealand's Rodger Fox Big Band.

Given her age, 25, and gender, the petite blonde from Auckland, New Zealand, hears the familiar comments while setting up for a gig or wheeling around her enormous bass:

"They'll say, 'Oh, you can't play.' I used to get hurt by it, upset, when I was young.

"Now I just keep quiet knowing that once I play, they'll shut up."

The UNLV graduate student is writing a research paper that examines the scarcity of women in jazz 60 years after they proved themselves as competent musicians while filling the gap in swing bands during World War II.

That scarcity is the reason the international group Sisters In Jazz, which recently awarded McGowan the honor of performing in an all-female jazz quintet at the International Association for Jazz Education, exists. The group, part of the IAJE, is designed to help women succeed in the male-dominated genre.

"Girls aren't necessarily encouraged to go that direction at a young age," says Nate McClendon, education programs manager for the IAJE, based in Manhattan, Kan. "This is how we're trying to deal with that."

Inspired by Jaco Pastorious, McGowan started on electric bass at age 14, then switched to acoustic at age 18. She studied for seven years with bassist Alberto Santareli and likes jazz for its spontaneous composition and "ultimate freedom of expression."

Her decision to play bass was never questioned by friends or family. Still, after high school, McGowan was always the only woman in the group, save for an occasional vocalist or keyboard player.

But at January's IAJE conference in New York, she will kick it musically with an ensemble of women from the Juilliard School, the New School, Berklee College of Music in Boston and the University of Cincinnati.

"I'm looking forward to meeting the other girls," McGowan says, sitting in a practice room at UNLV just before ripping through a version of "Alone Together."

"We don't get a chance to have a thing like guys have, you know, 'the boys in the band.' "

The trip will help land her the connections she needs for when she moves there next year after graduating from UNLV with a master's degree in music/jazz performance.

McGowan says she always knew that she would leave New Zealand to find a more thriving jazz scene - New York or Los Angeles. Other than the television show, "CSI," she knew little of Las Vegas and came here after being recruited by Tom Warrington, a Los Angeles bass player who teaches at UNLV and who was playing a gig in New Zealand with his jazz group.

"Compared to New Zealand, I had this preconception that it would be 10 times better because jazz is American music."

Laughing, she adds, "I left family and friends to come to this weird city where there is no jazz. The faculty here is amazing, but there are some amazing musicians here who just don't play."

UNLV's 20-year-old jazz program may not yet have the prestige of University of North Texas or Berklee. But it does have Warrington, Dave Loeb, a keyboard player and arranger who worked years in Hollywood as director of jazz studies, and guitarist Joe Lano as an adjunct professor. Students such as McGowan help raise the bar. She's the second student from UNLV selected as a winner of the Sisters In Jazz competition.

Locally, she performs in three school groups and three groups outside of school and has only one semester left before she heads to New York.

"My goal is to play the best music that I can and write. I also want to play with the best musicians."

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