Jazz Alchemy
How UMass became an epicenter of jazz innovation
“Jazz was music to dance to. It was also music to think about. It was not only dance music, it was liberation music. It was political. It was soft-blue-light-in-the-basement-lovemaking kind of music. It's all of it, and more.”
That’s how Kari Njiiri, host of New England Public Media’s Jazz Safari, describes the genre, which is both retro and persistently modern.
Njiiri studied at UMass in the ’70s, and by that time, jazz was well established. From big bands to bebop, the shapeshifting genre that came out of New Orleans in the early 1900s had blossomed over and over in various styles and colors, and it was now a bona fide trademark of American culture.
But in 1970, jazz was just arriving at UMass, and the Valley was about to become a hotbed of jazz talent—forever altering the history of the genre, and of our university.
A calling
Frederick C. Tillis grew up in Texas, playing jazz saxophone and trumpet professionally by age 12. Known then as “Baby Tillis,” he went on to earn a bachelor’s degree by 19. In 1970, he was recruited by music department head Philip Bezanson to teach at UMass. Before long, Tillis founded what is now the Jazz & African American Music Studies program, and the university was soon populated by some of the greatest contemporary jazz musicians.
Professor Jeffrey Holmes, today the director and coordinator of the program Tillis founded, arrived at UMass not long after, in 1980. “Prior to Fred being here, jazz was played ... outside of the department, shall we say,” Holmes says. His office wall is lined with framed diplomas and awards, but the baseball-cap-donning professor has a matter-of-fact tone that makes him approachably down to earth.
The establishment of a jazz and African American music program at the university was a break from the classical music studies that traditionally mark academia, but one that was consistent with the inclusivity at UMass in the era. As political and cultural turmoil shook the nation, UMass stayed in the conversation, often turning toward, rather than away from, cultural diversity.
In a 2022 Massachusetts Daily Collegian article, Pamela Tillis ’88, the late Tillis’s daughter, noted that his work to create the jazz program received some resistance. It’s hard to imagine that wasn’t the case—jazz is a genre far from the ivory tower of (white) classical music, and it emerged from conditions of American enslavement. With the racial reckoning of the early ’70s in full force, introducing jazz to the academic halls of UMass no doubt ruffled some feathers.
That said, the first Black chancellor of UMass, Randolph Wilson Bromery, energetically embraced the position in 1971 and championed the arts at the university throughout his tenure. Bromery oversaw the construction of the Fine Arts Center, and as a jazz aficionado, he tapped Tillis to serve as its first director. A renowned jazz musician was now directing the flagship’s arts programming, forever solidifying the legacy of the arts at UMass—and of Chancellor Bromery, for whom the Fine Arts Center is now named.
The arrival of Tillis was just the beginning for UMass jazz—and the impact of his jazz program would extend beyond the halls of the university, shaping the genre itself.
Ascending
In 1972, Tillis recruited saxophonist Archie Shepp to the jazz program. Shepp was at the forefront of avant-garde jazz when he joined the UMass faculty. A few years prior, he had played on John Coltrane’s album Ascension. Released not long after Coltrane’s A Love Supreme (one of the most highly lauded jazz works ever recorded), Ascension is a cacophonous piece that is hard to parse on first listen. It’s an emblem of the “free jazz” style, in which the usual constraints like tempo and predictable chord changes were eschewed for something more elemental. Ascension wasn’t the first jazz record to take this experimental approach, but it was a landmark of the genre. All this to say: When Archie Shepp arrived at UMass, his presence on Ascension—not to mention more than a dozen records under his own name and collaborations with myriad jazz stars—meant that if you were in the know, Shepp was a big deal.
Ascension was a legacy-defining moment for Shepp, who went on to teach at UMass for 30 years. It’s also the recording that, in a UMass residence hall in the early ’70s, made the bassist of a popular campus funk band into a modern jazz notable.
Avery Sharpe ’76 joined our Zoom interview in a shimmery purple button-down, a pixelated photo of Muhammad Ali serving as his background. As a new student in 1972, he was a physical education major who played funk music with his friends.
Sharpe explains his transformation like this: “I come out of the Church of God in Christ. I had seen what we call a religious experience—people having a come-to-Jesus moment. I had that with jazz. It was literally like a spiritual awakening. I was listening to WMUA, and they were playing John Coltrane’s Ascension. I was like, ‘What are these cats doing?’ I just sat there, mesmerized, and then I went out and tried to get every John Coltrane record there was. Literally, overnight, I went from Kool & the Gang funk to John Coltrane's Ascension.”
UMass may have been the best place on the planet for a young bassist who’d just discovered avant-garde jazz. Before long, Sharpe had been taken under Archie Shepp’s wing and was studying with master bassist Reggie Workman, along with other luminaries in the jazz department.
“I called my father and said, ‘These cats, these professors, they’re great musicians, but they’re spending a lot of time with me outside of class, and what’s up with that?’” Sharpe recalls. “My father said, ‘Well, obviously they see something in you that you don’t see.’”
His father was right. To date, Sharpe has released more than a dozen albums and played bass for more than 20 years in the band of jazz piano icon McCoy Tyner.
Archie Shepp played a big role in making Sharpe a modern legend. Sharpe remembers playing with Shepp at his home, getting the inside scoop from his mentor on the lines Coltrane’s bassist played. And he remembers the student ensemble rehearsals that Shepp led as “some of the most fun,” sometimes lasting until midnight or one in the morning.
Once Shepp joined the faculty, the legendary saxophonist put his performance career on the back burner and devoted himself to bringing up the next generation. In a 2007 Collegian article, Shepp said, “The first 20 years I was here, I made up my mind that music performance would have to take a back seat to teaching.”
As this resolution indicates, Shepp’s legacy is one of highly principled action. He’s known not just as a wonderful musician and educator, but also for his Afrocentric approach to music. A 2001 JazzTimes article boldly called Archie Shepp “the jazz world’s analogue to Malcolm X.” Politics were indeed central to Shepp's music and career. At UMass, his classes included Revolutionary Concepts in African American Music and the Black Musician in the Theater.
“We created this music,” Shepp told the Collegian. “There is continuity in Black music, which began in Africa and is still important today.”
Liberation
In the same year as Shepp, Max Roach also joined the UMass jazz faculty. By the time he arrived at UMass, Roach was established as one of the greatest jazz drummers ever, a giant of the bebop era who played alongside icons like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, and Miles Davis. Roach also boasted famed recordings in his own name, including Members, Don’t Git Weary.
When program coordinator Jeff Holmes was hired at UMass in 1980, he was tasked with co-teaching a History of Jazz course with Roach. He sums up his trepidation and Roach’s legacy in one sentence: “He is the history of jazz.”
Fiercely political in his art, some of Roach’s recordings are now hallmarks of the Civil Rights era. His 1960 album We Insist! Freedom Now Suite combined antiracist lyrics with technically masterful jazz. Its cultural impact on racialized groups throughout the world was so significant that apartheid South Africa banned its sale. (The album’s final track, “Tears for Johannesburg,” is a discordant soundscape reflecting on the Sharpeville massacre, in which police killed 69 protestors in a Black township. The track features Roach’s unrelenting drumming in an off-kilter 5/4 time, alongside mournful singers and hollering wind instruments.)
“He wasn't a stay-in-your-lane type of jazz musician,” Holmes says. “He was looking to use his musical platforms to make substantive statements.”
Avery Sharpe goes even further: “I'm sure they had an FBI dossier on him.”
Roach’s political prowess was part of what informed Archie Shepp’s. In the 2007 Collegian article, Shepp said, “I first began listening to Max Roach as a teenager. I was impressed by his music and intellectual career. He always tried to demonstrate that Black music was a music of liberation and struggle.”
Roach was a magnet for the UMass jazz program, and he maintained an affiliation with the university for more than 20 years. Beyond the teaching and mentorship he offered to the next generation of jazz musicians (which included giving the toast at Avery Sharpe’s wedding), he was among the founders of the Jazz in July program along with Tillis and the lauded pianist Billy Taylor. That program, which continues to this day, is a two-week intensive in which students study jazz improvisation with some of the nation’s best artists and educators.
As a testament to Roach’s skill as an educator, Sharpe says, “Max is responsible for me being able to play with every major drummer that you can think of in jazz.” He recalls a lesson in which Roach taught him to listen to each of a drummer’s four limbs.
“A person might be right-handed or left-handed, or right-footed or left-footed, so they might favor a particular part of the drum more,” Sharpe recalls Roach explaining. “They might be at a little different time than each other, so you just really have to find where the actual beat is.”
Experimentation
When Avery Sharpe reflects on his time at UMass, he says, “I just happened to be at the right place at the right time.” Sharpe has tremendous skill, so this modest reflection may rest a bit too much on kismet. But the sentiment remains that UMass had an unimaginably deep bench of talented jazz faculty, and Sharpe isn’t the only one who remembers the jazz heroes of UMass with a wonder verging on disbelief.
"He could play one note, and there was nothing else to say."
Yusef Lateef '75EdD, an experimental wind musician, elicits that sense of awe. Remembering the late Lateef, Jeff Holmes says, “I’ve never heard anybody that could play one or two notes and be so ... so impressive.” Holmes’s gaze drifts, looking far off, or perhaps into his memories. “He could play one note, and there was nothing else to say.”
Lateef is remembered as a jazz musician, but the descriptor he preferred for his music was “autophysiopsychic.” In a 2012 lecture, Lateef explained, “This word means music from one’s physical, spiritual, and mental self, i.e., music from the heart.” Lateef began his musical career as a saxophonist, but soon added flute, oboe, bassoon, and non-Western wind instruments like the shehnai and the arghul (from South Asia and the Middle East, respectively). With a deep bench of instruments, and a capacity to elicit equally striking melodies from an ethereal flute or a reedy oboe, he rejected the norms and nomenclature of the day for something personal and individually expressive. Lateef didn’t have a single iconic sound as much as he seemed to be master of all.
In 1987, Lateef joined the UMass jazz faculty. The next year, he won a Grammy for his album Yusef Lateef’s Little Symphony, on which he was the sole musician, layering recordings of himself on more than a dozen instruments.
Lateef remained at UMass until 2002, and as a professor, “he was all about the students,” Holmes says.
Sharpe, who played on several of Lateef’s albums, also remembers him as a cherished mentor.
“If I hadn't heard from him or worked with him in a while, I would call and say, ‘Brother Yusef, just talk, because every time you say something, I learn,’” Sharpe says.
Reverberation
The 2025–26 season of the UMass Fine Arts Center marks its 50th anniversary. The season kicked off with a performance by Wynton Marsalis, the living legend jazz trumpeter. Marsalis performed in the Tillis Performance Hall, which is housed in the Bromery Center for the Arts—both named for the early champions of jazz on campus, now the hubs of performance at UMass.
Explaining jazz at UMass is akin to flipping through a Rolodex of the greatest players of their generation. Holmes puts it succinctly when he says that having these players at UMass “made a great statement for the university that shouldn’t be forgotten.”
But he’s also quick to point out that even these superb characters don’t tell the whole story of jazz at UMass. Many of today's faculty members “may not have the same type of international name recognition,” he says, smiling. “But our students still thrive.”
