Leading by example

A man wakes up in a small room in a cozy Italian Alps chalet. Everything in the room glows amber and reflects warmth from the morning sun.

The only noise is birds chirping outside. Through the window, he can see the peaks of a dozen mountains.

The man’s long wavy, graying hair is a sign of his age and his life.

The frames of his glasses are thick and dark, bold like his character.

Jazz performer Christopher Collins has traveled around the world in pursuit of his life, music. Most of his international work has been in Europe, Japan and South Africa.

His time spent in these areas has been devoted to performing, networking and researching all areas of jazz music. Collins, Wayne State’s director of jazz studies, has found many locations of interest, but one city in particular has played a major role in his career.

Torino, Italy is the home of Emanuele Cisi, a saxophone player Collins met in New York City. Collins and Cisi discovered many things about one another. They are the same age and both men grew up in an urban setting that largely influenced the music they made, Collins said. Coincidentally, they both played saxophones made by a small company in Quarna, Italy, a small town hidden in the Italian Alps.

“Torino is often called the Detroit of Europe,” Collins said, “because it’s an urban environment with the auto industry at its heart.”

Former Wayne State President Irvin D. Reid offered a research enhancement program grant for people who created projects in the arts that incorporated urban lifestyle and culture.

In 2007 Collins was awarded $26,000 for the Detroit-Torino Urban Jazz Project.

“This really fit well with what I had been talking to Emanuele about,” Collins said. “The project brings together music and visual elements, specifically architectural photography of Detroit and Torino,” Collins said.

Collins and Cisi wanted to see how different compositions and art would feed off one another to create a multimedia project. In concert, images are presented on large screens behind musicians as they perform.

“It’s created a network of artists between Detroit and Torino and has been a beautiful thing for me … many new friendships and relationships with wonderful musical and visual artists,” Collins said.

His travels have grown larger over time, but started small and early in his college years.
He attended WSU after graduating from high school. He thought about majoring in the medical field, but Matt Michaels, director of jazz studies at the time, encouraged him to pursue a music career.

“I had a great love for it [jazz] but I was terrified it wouldn’t provide any sort of existence for me financially or otherwise,” Collins said.

He listened to Michaels’ advice and studied music at WSU.

“After a couple of years, I left,” Collins said. “I wanted to go to New York. I wanted to chase this music in the streets.”

Collins started traveling for days on end by car.

“I didn’t have a hotel or couldn’t afford one, so I just drove and slept in my car,” he said.
When he had the opportunity to come back to WSU he did, again with the encouragement of Michaels.

After finishing his bachelor’s degree, Collins moved into a studio in Detroit’s commercial district where he could play at any time of day or night.

“I used to wake up every morning and just play, practice, write,” he said. “I pursued that life for five or six years … nothing but intensely practicing and researching.”

Collins then spent three years in Chicago teaching at Northern Illinois University while finishing his master’s degree. Although he never intended to teach, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

Coming Home
His experience in Chicago led to his next move, an offer to come home to teach at WSU.

“Before I knew it, I found myself on a tenure track here at Wayne State – something I never imagined,” Collins said. “From being at Northern Illinois University, I began to realize that universities that are research institutes offer artists very unique opportunities to pursuit art on a pure level. The same way someone in the medical field pursues research without having the weight of a commercial industry pushing them.”

“I had seen the program before he was the head, and I’ve seen how it’s grown,” said Michael Karloff, one of Collins’ graduate students. “In the three years he’s been running it, I can’t tell you how hard he’s worked.”

With students, Collins is frank, honest and at times harsh, but he acts with purpose.
“I don’t have patience because I know in the real world, there isn’t a lot of patience,” Collins said. “I’m not preparing you for the real world if I’m being sympathetic to things.”

He expects his students to do the same as he did, study hard and practice week after week to become stronger.

“He can tell when a student isn’t pulling their weight and he’ll tell them,” Karloff said.

“There was a time during my undergrad work where I was starting to play so many gigs that I was struggling to dedicate the appropriate time to my studies at Wayne,” said Chuck Newsome, one of Collins’ graduate students. “I remember Chris making a candid comment to the effect that these gigs would always be there, but my music education was something more important and enduring.”

He does what he can for his student because he knows firsthand what it feels like to have the support of a professor. Collins didn’t realize his full potential until Michaels pulled him aside and told him he saw it.

“I felt a sense of momentum and said, ‘Wow, I’m doing something that other people recognize as significant,’” Collins said.

He said that students who have taken music seriously for a couple of years often start questioning whether they’re really ready to give their lives to music.

“For an artist, your life is music. Music is your life,” Collins said.  “There comes a point where you begin to accept that they are intertwined.”

The highlight of his life surprisingly has little to do with music. The birth of his son, Christopher, is the most meaningful part of life, according to Collins.

“Artists, we spend our entire lives locked in small rooms practicing and writing and pursuing and researching the music and art we are engaged in,” Collins said. “And then suddenly something happens like that that reminds you how big the world is and how important things are outside the scope of what you’ve been chasing your whole life.
“And it’s stunning … It’s pretty darn powerful.”