KINGSTON, R.I. – Aug. 1, 2024 – Luis Nunez had an otherworldly experience at last year’s Newport Jazz Festival. He soloed on trombone on a personal favorite – Christian McBride’s “The Shade of the Cedar Tree” – before a sold-out festival on a beautiful summer weekend.

But the surreal moment may have been finding himself playing old-school video games with one of his idols, Grammy Award-winning bassist Thundercat, aka Stephen Lee Bruner, in his dressing room.

“I’ve been listening to his music since I was a freshman in high school,” said Nunez, a graduate student at the University of Rhode Island from Miami. “I walked up to him at the festival in earnest and told him how much I really loved his music and we talked about the community he grew up in with his brother Ronald, Kamasi Washington and Ryan Porter [all musicians]. It was a really cool experience talking with him.”

While Thundercat isn’t back in Newport this summer for the iconic festival’s 70th anniversary, Nunez is. He’s one of 18 URI jazz students playing the sold-out festival this weekend, Aug. 2-4, at Fort Adams. It’s the second straight year URI students have been invited to play all three days of the festival. But this year, URI’s contingent will be more than double last year’s crew.

“What better way for us to grow and cultivate the jazz curriculum and program at URI?” said professor Emmett Goods, head of URI’s jazz program. “The festival is a cultural nugget that I think is important for our students and we are excited about the possibility of this partnership deepening even more.”

“I’m very excited to be performing again,” said Nunez. “Last year, we played all three days but our group was designed to showcase individual soloists. This year, professors Emmett Goods and Atla DeChamplain decided it would be better to have three combos representing the different ensembles and student initiatives that play Black American music in the URI music department.”

Along with Fernando Marzan and Andrew Dyson, Nunez is one of three bandleaders heading the combos, which will each play a 25-minute set of jazz standards on the Foundation stage during the weekend. Their performances start at about 1:25 p.m. each day.

Nunez’s group – the Modern Music Student Ensemble – which includes Jude LaRoche on tenor saxophone, Nick Pepe on guitar, Joey Peavy on Piano, Wyatt Crosby on bass, and Matt Ippolito on drums, opens the festival for URI on Friday.

They will play modern jazz styles, said Nuniz, including Wayne Shorter’s “Pinocchio,” Buster Williams’ “Christina,” and “King Tut’s Strut,” a 1988 song by saxophonist Jackie McLean that brought the group together. During the spring, the combo played the song for visiting artist and renowned jazz drummer Carl Allen, who had performed the song with McLean, who in turn has been an influence on a number of URI faculty, Nunez said.

Dyson, who graduated from URI last spring with a degree in music education, is leading the Afro-Cuban Jazz Ensemble – with Dyson on drums, Tyler Vollucci on alto saxophone, Collin Klampert on tenor saxophone, Ben Resendes on baritone saxophone, Mason Tucker on piano, Pepe on guitar, Carleton Fisher on bass, Ippolito on congas, and vocalists Ricki Rizzo, Grace Anderson, and Louis Shriber. 

On Saturday, the ensemble will perform a variety of Latin tunes, which were chosen and arranged by the group from songs they played together in the spring semester, Dyson said.

Marzan, who graduated from URI with a Master of Music degree in jazz performance last spring, is leading the Rams Jazz Ensemble, which will close out the festival for URI on Sunday. The group includes Marzan on alto saxophone, Arthur Galt on trumpet, Justin St. Clair on piano, along with Rizzo, Klampert, Fisher, and Ippolito.

Marzan has selected two contemporary tunes by trumpeter Roy Hargrove – the bluesy “Public Eye” and “Top of My Head” – along with two vocal numbers that feature Rizzo – Jazzmeia Horn’s “I Remember You” and Nancy Wilson’s version of “I Will Never Marry.”

“Those four songs are great because you get a little bit of everything,” said Marzan. “They’re feel-good tunes. It’s sunny, it’s beautiful out, people want to dance, they want to smile, they want to feel good. I feel the songs fit the aesthetic of the festival really well.”

Rizzo, a senior from Lynbrook, New York, majoring in jazz vocal performance, is excited to perform with both groups. “With the two groups, they’re so different,” she said. “It’s nice to have a big variety of sounds and the chance to share different ideas with different people. And it’s always fun working and collaborating with new people.”

Under a tight schedule, preparation for the festival has gone well – if at times challenging because of summer distractions and the long distances some students had to drive to make rehearsals. Marzan praises his bandmates for their commitment and said collaboration between the musicians has been great.

“I am a little older than these guys but they’re mature players. When it comes to the music they’re really crushing it,” said Marzan. “What I’m offering them is just some of the things that I’ve experienced, some of the things that were taught to me when I was 18 or 19 years old.”

Overseeing the largest group, Dyson used Zoom meetings in June to get ready for the festival, using the sessions to discuss music selections and schedule July rehearsals in July. “I feel extremely fortunate to be playing the festival for a second year in a row,” said Dyson, who starts as a full-time music teacher at Central Falls High School this fall. “I think the chance to be a bandleader brings a new insight into the process of putting together a group and it really allows me to prepare for my career in education.”

“The Newport Jazz Fest is one of the best jazz festivals in the nation. There’s a history of jazz luminaries performing at the festival and I’m so grateful that our students will be featured this year,” said Atla DeChamplain, assistant teaching professor of amplified voice. “They’ve been working hard to show what we can do at URI and I’m so proud of them.” 

Drummer Matt Ippolito, the only student who will play with all three ensembles, has made that long drive – either from New York or a relative’s home in Connecticut – to a half-dozen practices in the last three weeks. This weekend will be his first exposure to the jazz festival, as a concertgoer or a performer.

“This is an incredible opportunity to play at this festival, and one I never thought I’d have,” said Ippolito, a junior in music education from Rockland County, New York. “To be able to prepare for an event like this with such talented musicians – who I am also lucky to call my friends and peers – has been an amazing experience that I hope to have again one day.”

For Marzan, this is his third time playing Newport – including last year and in 2019 with URI’s Big Band. Along with performing, he’s had the chance to talk with some of his heroes – like Ravi Coltrane, Marcus Miller, Joshua Redman, and Branford Marsalis – and this year hopes to meet Buster Williams and Kamasi Washington. “Talking with them and seeing how human they are is really neat,” he said.

He’s also looking forward to an atmosphere that mirrors last year’s sold-out festival.

“It was great to see how the crowd was committed to the performance, how they appreciated us being there,” said Marzan, who lives in West Warwick. “It really made us comfortable as performers because you could see people dancing, smiling and really engaging with what we were doing musically. 

“I would expect the same this year. The crowd that comes out for Newport is so incredible and supportive. They just love the music – like we do.”