On Friday, Oct. 18 2024, Cyrus Nabipoor, a professional musician, and the Grant Jazz Ensemble joined together to create a notable performance. Nabipoor’s jazz quartet played with a professional string quartet in the Grant High School auditorium, with the Grant Jazz Ensemble as his opener.
Nabipoor is a Grant alumnus, which is why he chose the school’s jazz ensemble to play his opening set. He is known for his trumpet playing, with three albums to his name: “Remote” in 2019, “Live at the Marigny Opera House” in 2020, and “In Lieu of Tears” in 2023. After graduating with a bachelor’s in music and an outstanding undergraduate award in jazz and brass from Loyola University New Orleans, Nabipoor started working as an artist-in-residence at schools across Portland Public Schools (PPS), including Grant. Because of these connections, he chose Grant as the location for his album release concert.
“A good friend of mine … suggested to me, ‘Why don’t you look into getting a youth music program involved?’ And I was like, ‘That’s an amazing idea. Why didn’t I think of that?’” says Nabipoor.
“I work regularly with the band program here,” Nabipoor says, “I’ve become good friends with Chris McCurdy, the band director here, so I reached out to him and just pitched the idea and he thought it sounded great. It gives me a great venue to perform at, the sound is good, and (it) brings in Grant families who might not have heard me before. It also provides the students in the Jazz Ensemble an opportunity to be involved in a professional gig, to hear this high level of music.”
Jude Sheridan explains how Nabipoor had a significant influence on him as a student musician. Sheridan says he saw jazz as a new opportunity after experiencing traditional band before high school.
“I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll play some jazz,’ and then I joined the jazz band and it was just really inspiring seeing all these older musicians and Mr. McCurdy, all the clinicians that come in, and seeing this whole world of opportunity and just things to learn. And then I just started getting really interested, taking it seriously (and) loving it.”
Sheridan says seeing professionals who work in his “specialty” talk about their work taught him more about something he already loved and made him appreciate it even more.
Nabipoor works with the Grant jazz students biweekly — both personally and in groups — and describes how the progress over time is inspiring and how impressed he is with the students. McCurdy feels fortunate to have Nabipoor as a resource.
Sheridan, as well as many of his peers, express interest in continuing with music for work, and if not for work, as a hobby, knowing they will always want to keep it in their lives.
Once, while Nabipoor was at a summer camp, he experienced a lecture by Robert Crowell, a noteworthy baritone saxophone player; he now calls the lecture “The Myth of the well-rounded student.” Summarizing Crowell’s talk Nabipoor says, “There’s this pervasive apathy among young people in the way that it’s cool to not care about stuff. You know, you don’t want to give away that you are really passionate or care about something, you know, for fear of being vulnerable … And then that coupled with the way that our education system is set up to where you are learning a bit about a lot.”
While Nabipoor acknowledges the benefits of a well-rounded education, he says, “At a certain point … wouldn’t you rather decide what you want to get really, really good at and, you know, give that your all?”
Nabipoor believes that perhaps it’s better to have just one specialty you can excel at, instead of being ‘pretty good’ at a wide variety of things. He says that, compared to when he was growing up, more young people are openly passionate about their talents, which he says can open up a whole new world for them. Just as the Jazz Ensemble has for Grant students — including Nabipoor himself.
