Muncie may not be the home to jazz music, but it is the home to Jackie Allen, a professional jazz vocalist who spends her time helping musicians in the community.
She has toured around the world, headlining at the Beijing Music Festival and being featured at the Paris 2008 Bass Festival with her husband, Hans Sturm, a Ball State associate professor of music. She has also performed locally, including at the Hometown Family Christmas show at John R. Emens Auditorium last month.
Allen has released nine albums, the latest of which, "Starry Night," featured the Muncie Symphony Orchestra.
"In my opinion, there are only [a] few very talented jazz vocalists out there, and Jackie is definitely one of them. She is a blast to work with and always aiming for the highest," said Bohuslav Rattay, director of the Muncie Symphony Orchestra.
Allen taught a formal songwriting course at Ball State in the fall. It was Allen's first formal teaching course, and she had students from varying musical levels and interests, including some non-music majors.
One of the challenges was creating a balance for the students in the class. She wanted to challenge students, yet not make the class so challenging that some students would be overwhelmed. As a result, she would often give students different assignments based on their skills and needs. Her favorite part was keeping the class interesting and showing her students different ways to write.
"It's nice to keep the students surprised," Allen said.
She assigned the students to write a song for their favorite artist. The students chose artists such as Elton John, David Bowie, Prince, Rod Stewart and Queen. They had to analyze what kind of material their chosen artist liked to sing and style the piece to their tastes.
"They had to think, ‘how would I write for someone like that?' And it was amazing [what] they wrote. A lot of them actually sound like they would work for that artist," Allen said.
Allen grew up outside of Milwaukee and began exploring music at a young age, listening to anything she could get her hands on. Her mother sang and played piano semi-professionally and her father played the tuba in the United States Marine Band.
She grew up listening to the popular Dixieland tunes, as well as pompa music, similar to polka, from the German and Polish immigrants in the Wisconsin area. She also listened to artists such as The Beatles, Elton John, Billy Joel and Stevie Wonder.
The first album she ever bought was by The 5th Dimension. The group's songs mixed pop music with R&B, soul and jazz styles.
Allen participated in her grade school and high school's strong music program, and she played the French horn. She found that there was a lot of community support for the music programs in her schools.
"In music, I found that I excelled," Allen said. "And I got that feedback from the teachers, and that really helped me go in that direction."
She sees this support of music and the arts from communities as a changing dynamic in today's schools, and she feels privileged that such support existed when she was growing up.
After high school, Allen studied applied voice at the University of Wisconsin. That is when she first met her husband. In college, she was also introduced to some of the great jazz vocalists and ensembles. Her mentors would become Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday, among many others.
"Those were some the beginnings of my feeling and interest in [jazz]. ... I wanted to be creative myself. I like putting myself into the music. I was much more interested in finding my own way to sing a song," Allen said.
However, Allen left the university after her junior year. She wanted to perform as a jazz vocalist, but the university only offered a classical vocal major. Allen didn't have a primary interest in being a teacher at that time in order to use a classical vocal major.
"I didn't see finishing a degree at the time. That was foolish of me in hindsight. But I was already at the level where I was out singing professionally," Allen said.
Even though she wasn't teaching formally, she still mentored other young vocalists while she was performing. There were not many universities that had jazz programs at the time, and it was an emerging field of study. So universities came to Allen as a respected vocalist.
"I loved sharing what I did, so I found myself teaching anyway," Allen said.
That led to a career in teaching at several universities. She has taught at the Chicago Center for Performing Arts of Roosevelt University, Elmhurst College, Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music, the Bloom School of Jazz and the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music in Milwaukee.
Allen moved to Muncie once her and her husband decided to have a family.
She and her husband still toured while living in Muncie and took their son along.
"We found a way to make it work. Have a family and have our careers, too," Allen said.
Allen now teaches classes at Cornerstone Center for the Arts in Muncie. It is a nonprofit business that offers a variety of art classes to students of any age. Classes are offered in drawing, drums, piano, ballet, dance, theater, songwriting and singing, among other options.
One of her students from Cornerstone, a freshman English and creative writing major, said Allen's approach to music is more personable than most other instructors.
"You just feel like you're having a conversation, not just taking lessons. She makes you think about music in a different way. She is always painting a portrait with her work," Ross Reagan said.
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