When the fall term starts at Prairie State College, a familiar face will be missing from its bandrooms and classrooms. Valerie Nicholson is retiring in June after having worked at the college since 1986.
The lifelong Park Forest resident, professor of music and coordinator of Prairie State’s music program, is well-known in the area, especially for the Prairie State Jazz Festival, which she founded in the ’80s.
“We had zero funding. I didn’t even ask permission to do it. I didn’t talk to the dean. I didn’t know how to do that. I didn’t know I was supposed to,” she said. What she did do was talk with Bob Anderson, who was involved with philanthropy at Prairie State. “He managed to scare up a little bit of money for the artists. In a lot of ways it was probably a big mess, but it was a start.”
One of the guest clinicians for the first festival was Bunky Green, of Country Club Hills. “He was the only local person that year,” she said. “He’s another kind of unsung hero like (Jazz pianist) Art Hodes – a major, major artist but not a household name.”
Nicholson, who began studying piano when she was 3, eventually took private lessons with Hodes, a Park Forest resident who was a “really significant jazz pianist” who helped her understand improvisation, that she didn’t have “to play exactly what’s written on the page.”
“I have the option to come up with my own arrangements … reworking standard sheet music so it was more in a jazz style than in that stiffer publisher style,” she said.
Bill Grimes, who taught at Louisiana State University, talked her into starting the jazz festival when they met at a national jazz educators conference.
The first year, four bands attended, including Prairie State’s band. “One year – it was way too many – we had well over 30 (bands). It was too much. It’s a lot of bodies to keep track of and just scheduling the logistics was really challenging,” she said.
In February, Nicholson coordinated her final festival and recalled the evening concert.
“The music and vibe in the room was fantastic,” she said. “We literally threw a handful of students from two different schools who had never met before together into a combo. They put together a tune in minutes and performed it for hundreds of people. The spirit, camaraderie and mutual respect was palatable.”
She explained that the “overall mission” of the festival is to “build a community between students from different schools.”
“We have this diced-up patchwork of school districts that society tends to view as competing entities,” Nicholson said, adding that grouping schools into “good” and “bad” categories leads to students having those labels as well.
“This bothers me deeply, and I see activities like the (jazz festival) as a way to push back on those labels and simply regard students as people who are social beings who have wisdom and curiosity and solutions and gifts to share. It’s not a mission that we market or boast about. It’s simply the core of what we do,” she said.
The festival is one reason Nicholson received the inaugural Chicago Jazz Philharmonic’s “Jazz Alive” Educator’s award in 2019. She also has performed with ensembles such as the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, and performed at Chicago Jazz and Blues festivals with the former Burgess Gardner’s Well-Oiled Jazz Machine and Southland Jazz Ensemble. She was invited in 2021 to be an honorary board member for the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra and is director of music at Grace United Protestant Church in Park Forest.
The Jazz Alive award took her by surprise.
“I was stunned when the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic contacted me about the Educator’s Award, completely blindsided by it so much so that I asked if I could think about it overnight before accepting it – which is a response I suspect blindsided them!” she joked.
Roosevelt Griffin III, a nationally recognized music educator who is director of jazz studies at Northern Illinois University, said Nicholson, whom he’s known for about 35 years, has made a a large impact in the field.
Griffin attended the PSC jazz festival as a teen and for about 20 years as director of bands at Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School in Harvey. “My band played the evening concert many of those years,” he said. “We also started the Southland Jazz Ensemble – the professional ensemble that would play at Prairie State – so we definitely became great friends.”
He believes she received the Educator’s Award “because of what she has done for so many students, specifically with the Jazz Festival that has become the staple in our community. Putting together a festival that’s not a competition … for many years she’s provided this space for children and directors to learn.”
Griffin said the festival helped with his development as a teacher. “She’s amazing and I personally owe a lot to her for her friendship and guidance,” he shared, adding that his favorite thing about Nicholson is her ability to stay calm.
“No matter how chaotic the situation, she stays calm. It looks like she’s gliding all the time. … She overcomes obstacles whether it’s for her students or students at the Jazz Fest, which is a staple here in the south suburbs that has set the stage for many students to have careers as professionals.”
He also praised her musical talent. “The jazz world is about serving others. When I think about Val, it’s how she puts things together, puts people together. How she makes things happen for other people,” he said. “The way she plays always takes care of the people around her. She plays to fulfill the needs of the ensemble. She doesn’t show off or anything like that.”
Another person the jazz festival inspired was Phil Crews, director of the Wind and Jazz Ensembles at Prairie State College, who retired last year after more than two decades as band director at Rich Township High School. He’s known Nicholson since 1994.
“The Prairie State Jazz Festival was a mecca of sorts for me as an educator and jazz ensemble director. I just felt like attending that festival and having my students interact with the clinicians and experience the true spirit of a festival was paramount to having a successful jazz season,” he said. “She started that festival in 1986 and it is still thriving till this very day and continues to bless the lives of the students who attend.”
Nicholson is the one who invited Crews to direct the Wind Ensemble at Prairie State, known at the time as the Prairie State Community Band, after “seeing something special in my choice of repertoire and my ability to bring out the best in my students,” he said, praising her ability to connect with people to benefit their lives.
Crews called Nicholson “a true gem to the community in which she served” and said he’ll miss her calmness and wisdom. “I will miss the countless conversations, which were sometimes way too long, on how to navigate building excellence and expectations in our ensembles.”
Nicholson said her colleagues are “phenomenal, 100% phenomenal. They’re not just smart and expert in their fields, but they’re great teachers.”
She added that she has loved her job. I love my students, I love my colleagues and I love the academic freedom,” she said. “Whatever I want to do with my students I can do, as long as they’re growing and they’re getting something out of it and their curiosity is piqued and they’re exposed to new things.”
Although she’s happy she’ll have more time to perform music in other settings, she’s not looking forward to one task she needs to tackle before retiring June 30. “I’ve got to clear out my office by then, which is the biggest fear I have. It’s just packed with stuff, so I have to take an inventory of my instruments. I have my work cut out for me!” she exclaimed.
Nicholson also hopes to finish her dissertation to earn her PhD in music theory from the University of Chicago and wants to learn how to play her piano again “on a sophisticated level” as well as resuming her art, getting more deeply into composing and arranging music, and spending time with her husband, Steve Jacobson, who retired last year.
“I can have that third cup of coffee if I want to. I’m going to putz. I joke with Steve that I want to be the neighborhood kook who sits out in the front lawn in a lawn chair and waves to traffic and people who go by,” she said with a laugh. “If I live to be an old lady, that’s what I want to do – be the unofficial neighborhood greeter.”
Melinda Moore is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
