Today we’d like to introduce you to Sam Blakeslee

Hi Sam, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.

My name is Sam Blakeslee and I am a trombonist, composer, and educator based out of Brooklyn, NY. I am originally from Columbus, OH, but also lived and studied in the Cleveland/Akron area before moving to New York in 2017. I am involved in several projects centered around my original music, but for the last few years I have been focusing a lot of energy on composing, recording, and performing with my jazz orchestra, the Sam Blakeslee Large Group. I’m lucky to perform with many artists and ensembles across different genres in NYC as well as continued collaborations with Ohio-based musicians, all of whom I deeply admire. As an educator, I am a faculty member at the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz in the Hartt School of Music at The University of Hartford, where I serve as the Director of the Jackie McLean Institute Big Band as well as Artist Teacher of Jazz Trombone.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?

I think for an artist in any field, the journey can be difficult. It takes several years for your efforts to germinate, even in subtle ways, which can often be discouraging. As I look back on my journey over the last 10 years or so trying to live and work as a freelance musician and composer, I have learned to become more grateful for the times of extreme hardship, since those times have made me more resilient and simultaneously more focused on my craft as opposed to external accolades. Thankfully, I have seen the duality of some months being extremely busy and months with very little work enough times that I trust it usually all works out in the end. I think the main struggle is just sticking with your passions long enough no matter what. Constantly trying to maintain my perseverance with freelancing and documenting my own music (and the financial hurdles that come with that) is what I continue to struggle with, but I try to keep the faith and my musical curiosity intact nonetheless!

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?

While the majority of my work and career fall under the umbrella of jazz and Black American Music, the work of a composer whose music is hardest to quantify under a single genre is what I seem to gravitate towards. My aim is to have my compositions reflect the same artistic ideals by pushing the creative envelope, while still creating a visceral and emotional reaction with the listener. This goal has placed me in the middle of traditional and avant-garde aesthetics. However, this is where I feel my work is most honest, as well as most impactful both for the musicians and the listeners. Trying to follow my musical heart has led me to compose for small jazz instrumentations, jazz orchestras, studio orchestras, electronic music, rock/fusion, classical chamber groups, and solo ventures. I am continually trying to represent these seemingly divergent interests in my discography. My goal is to also reinforce the important relationship of musical honesty with creative open-mindedness to my students at the University of Hartford and beyond. This is a tenet of creativity that I owe to many of my mentors and friends from my time living and studying in Northeast Ohio. A creative life can become burdened by genres and preconceived roles of what art should look and sound like. For me, music is the most ideal way to achieve that personal freedom and what further sustains me is to be able to share that feeling of freedom with the audience.

Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?

I’m lucky to have some truly exceptional teachers along the way that have helped make me into the musician and person I am today. While pursuing my undergraduate degree in Jazz Studies at Youngstown State University, Professor of Composition/Jazz Bass Dr. David Morgan was the first to inspire me to compose my own music and helped me form a lot of my principles of how meaningful pursuing a creative life can be. In my graduate studies in Classical Brass Performance at the University of Akron, I had two incredible brass instructors, classical trombonist Ed Zadrozny and jazz trumpeter Jack Schantz, both of whom helped create a strong foundation both in brass pedagogy as well as improvisation. I think about all three of them daily in my individual practice as even after 11 years after graduating, I’m still parsing through all of the info they gave to me.

From 2019-23 I was a member of the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop in NYC where I studied composition and arranging with Andy Farber and Alan Ferber. Both of them had indelible effects on my writing in different ways and I’m grateful to have been surrounded by their knowledge and approaches. Alan Ferber has been a longtime hero of mine and the prospect of getting to work with him in any capacity was one of my main reasons to move to NYC. Ferber also served as the producer for a recent studio recording with my jazz orchestra, the Sam Blakeslee Large Group. Having his insights into the development of the music, as well as getting to work with him in the studio was literally a dream come true.

The common thread between all of these influential teachers was their ability to make my gaps in knowledge and ability apparent to me in profound ways, but they also helped me cultivate and refine my musical voice along the way as well. It was never a “my way or the highway” approach, and I’m just so grateful to have been around all of them.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.samblakesleemusic.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sam_blakeslee/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/samblakesleemusic
• Twitter: https://x.com/blakesleejazz
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV7B02Z6cjQ7l6grMofuRCA

Image Credits

Photos 1 & 3: Alex Weil
Photos 2 & 5: Jon Challoner
Photo 4: Desmond White