{"id":7207,"date":"2026-09-18T09:47:27","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T13:47:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/performingartsnews\/?p=7207"},"modified":"2026-09-18T09:47:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T13:47:27","slug":"a-conversation-with-jay-epstein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/performingartsnews\/2026\/09\/18\/a-conversation-with-jay-epstein\/","title":{"rendered":"A Conversation with Jay Epstein"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Beyond<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Beyond the Notes presents<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond the Notes: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Jazz Suite Performed Live!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wednesday, September 23, 2026 12:00 PM<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charles Library Event Space<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Light refreshments served. Boyer recital credit given.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All programs are free and open to all, and registration<\/a> is encouraged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Scenes<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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On September 23, pianist and composer Jay Epstein<\/a> will bring his quartet to Temple University\u2019s Charles Library for Beyond the Notes: A Jazz Suite Performed Live<\/a><\/strong>. Joined by bassist Madison Rast, drummer Wayne Smith Jr., and alto saxophonist Jon Katz, Epstein will present SCENES, a three-section jazz suite built around 10 connected musical “scenes.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In advance of the performance, Epstein spoke with Boyer grad student Christopher Vu about the suite\u2019s gradual development over several years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This conversation has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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CHRISTOPHER VU: <\/strong>Let\u2019s start basic. For someone who\u2019s meeting you for the first time, how would you describe yourself and the music you make? And how would you describe SCENES?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAY EPSTEIN: <\/strong>I\u2019ve been playing and performing pretty much most of my life. It\u2019s always been part of my life. I went to conservatory, studied in New York, and then came to Philly and did my master\u2019s here [Temple University].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even while I was doing that, I always had this balance in the activity of my life. Half of my work has been focused on music and performance, and half has been teaching or working other jobs. I work in the private sector and do a lot of random activities that help subsidize my creative path. I think that has always come through in my writing, too. I look for a lot of balance in what I\u2019m doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SCENES is a project I\u2019ve been working on for the past couple of years. It\u2019s a multilayered work that takes this singular idea and weaves it through several sections. The overall work is about an hour, maybe an hour and 15 minutes, depending on how it\u2019s played. It\u2019s a little different every time because it\u2019s jazz. It\u2019s written in lead-sheet format<\/a>, so the ideas are written out. Some of it is very structured, but most of it is relatively loose and offers a lot of interpretation to whoever is performing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The themes remain consistent. It\u2019s broken down into Sections 1, 2, and 3, and you can hear the different arcs moving through it. Some of the ideas have been sewn together over the years. I think the last one in the series was pulled from something I was working on in 2015 or 2016. It was buried in my notes somewhere, and I thought, \u201cOh, that actually fits right into what I\u2019m doing here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The premise is really this interpretation of structure and balance, and how ideas can move and shift as we continue to progress and evolve them. That\u2019s also been the trajectory of my musical, performance, and educational life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VU: <\/strong>When you say \u201cideas,\u201d you mean musical ideas, motifs<\/a> and things like that? Because the word SCENES makes me think of something cinematic. You\u2019re not necessarily thinking of places, people, or events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EPSTEIN: <\/strong>Yeah, almost exactly. I\u2019ve been asked a lot if I did this project as a film score or for a specific thing it represents. There are jazz suites that do that, of course. And it could apply, technically speaking, but the idea was really based on these thematic ideas that get tweaked and pulled and stretched. They change and evolve as the work moves forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You hear one consistent theme reappear every three or four tracks, and then it\u2019s interspersed with other musical ideas that connect everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VU: <\/strong>When you first conceived this a few years ago, did you already have the concept of three sections and a certain number of SCENES? Or did you begin with SCENE 1 and keep adding to it, almost like working on a bonsai tree over the years?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EPSTEIN: <\/strong>More the latter. A lot of it came together in pieces. Sometimes I would write a four-, six-, or eight-bar idea, and that was the thing. Other times I\u2019d write three pages of really constructed direction. It depended on where I was in that journey, but a lot of it connected back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s funny. When I thought, \u201cOh, this is getting somewhere. We\u2019re almost there,\u201d one of the last things I did was go back to the beginning and add a pre-SCENE function. Before we even get to the first real theme, I added something else. Something wasn\u2019t settling right, and it needed something different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it has been constructed, cut and pasted, and merged in different ways. We have 13 tracks that will be recorded, but only 10 principal SCENES. The other tracks are connection points. Between SCENE 3 and SCENE 4, for example, I have SCENE 3.5, which is this short connection point that merges the two together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VU: <\/strong>How much of that did you discover in the rehearsal room? Were you bringing in a few bars and finding the arc with the band, or was most of it already there in the lead sheets?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EPSTEIN: <\/strong>Probably around 75 percent comes together as a finished product in the rehearsal room. You can have great ideas all day long, right? Whether they work is a totally different story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had an old version of SCENE 6. It was cool, and it was doing something, but it wasn\u2019t driving the connection point between SCENES 5 and 7 that I was looking for. It had too much energy. There was just something going on that didn\u2019t fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of it got chopped up and restructured into a totally different thing because of playing through it with people and really hearing, \u201cNo, this is a cool thing, but it\u2019s just not part of this project. We\u2019ll do that thing later. This needs something different.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VU: <\/strong>Tell me a little about the band. Are these the people who have been playing the piece with you over the past few years?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EPSTEIN: <\/strong>We\u2019ll have Wayne Smith Jr.<\/a>, who\u2019s one of the leading drummers in the Philly area and has been around for a long time. Madison Rast<\/a> [double bass] plays all over the city. And Jon Katz is on alto saxophone. He\u2019s also a well-known Philly guy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019re all local musicians and really great players. We get together pretty often to play, work on new arrangements and new tunes, read stuff, and, of course, play out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VU: <\/strong>I\u2019m thinking about this being performed in a library. Do you think the space will change the concert? Do you see yourself talking more about the SCENES in between? How will it feel different from a recording session or a jazz club?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EPSTEIN: <\/strong>Truthfully, I don\u2019t know yet. We\u2019ll see. The space and the audience play a lot into the output of the performance. We\u2019ll have to see what the vibe is that day and how everything is feeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m always down to talk about the work. I want people to understand, or at least have a decent concept of, how some of it has been pieced together and where ideas connect later in the work. But I also want the music to be the primary focus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The library show gives us an opportunity to be a little more concise and really focus on the compositional aspect of the work, versus a heavy, solo-featured performance. If we\u2019re playing at a club, the sets are an hour long, so we probably won\u2019t get through the full piece. And something that\u2019s three minutes in the studio could be 15 minutes live. It becomes this whole long, drawn-out experience. It\u2019s a totally different vibe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the library, we\u2019ll be able to do the entire suite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VU: <\/strong>Once it\u2019s recorded, do you still see SCENES evolving? Could there be a live album in a few years, or a five- or 10-year revisit of the music?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EPSTEIN: <\/strong>I think there could be. Let\u2019s say we take SCENE 4 and go perform it. You can do these SCENES individually. That\u2019s fine. But any time you play SCENE 4, it\u2019s going to be different. That\u2019s the cool part about this music and the way it works. There\u2019s always this natural evolution in how the music shapes itself over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This project will live, and we\u2019ll be able to bring the SCENES back into performance whenever we want. But I\u2019m already moving on to a different project, and my next project is very different from this. I\u2019ll probably finish that and then come back and do something like a SCENES 2, or another version with a different variety of music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know that I would intentionally evolve the compositional aspect of this album. But when we go out and perform it, it naturally shifts and grows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VU: <\/strong>Have you had favorite SCENES over the years? Are there SCENES you look forward to playing, or maybe ones you\u2019re sick of playing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EPSTEIN: <\/strong>I\u2019m biased, but I enjoy them all. It depends on who I\u2019m playing with, too. I often play with different people, and people with different strengths, experiences, and voices gravitate toward different parts of the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SCENES have very distinct vibes, especially in the latter half, where the tone shifts a bit. A player with a certain approach might fit SCENES 7, 8, and 9 better than SCENES 3, 4, and 5. Maybe we choose what they naturally gravitate toward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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