#SoCaltech: Barb Catlin

“I have some folks who play in the Caltech jazz band who have been playing jazz their entire lives and are really great musicians. And then I have others who are just curious, like Caltech students tend to be, and they want to try something new. So I teach an improv class that accommodates everybody. People are always rather surprised and somewhat disappointed that there are so many rules to improvisation. You’re playing over all of this harmony that's going on underneath, so, as a musician who's improvising, you have to be able to understand what that harmony is, intellectually think about what's involved there with scales and chords and so on, and then create something that is spontaneous and melodic and free flowing in the confines of all of these chordal structures. And that is not easy. And you also, in turn, have to learn and incorporate the language of jazz, the vocabulary of things that people do when they improvise that has over a hundred years of tradition. Then you have to do it with a good sound, and you have to keep in time. And you also have to have this dialogue with the other musicians in real time. I think it's sort of the perfect partnership for a Caltech student because in mathematics, for example, there may be many answers for a particular problem, and that is very similar to jazz. The set of parameters are the same, but you can have 10 jazz musicians improvise and it's going to sound completely different. I also think scientists understand very well that they have to learn the sometimes tedious parameters before they can create these wonderful equations or improvisation.”

Barb Catlin is director of jazz ensembles with Caltech’s Performing and Visual Arts. She was recently named Jazz Educator of the Year for 2021 by the California Music Educators Association.

#SoCaltech is an occasional series celebrating the diverse individuals who give Caltech its spirit of excellence, ambition, and ingenuity. Know someone we should profile? Send nominations to magazine@caltech.edu.