New Jazz Faculty Member Creates Scores for TV Commercials
Kenyatta Beasley, a new faculty member in the School of Music, recently created scores for three television commercials now airing. The Gillette national spot typically airs on networks during sporting events. The other two are for regional supermarket chains, Kroger’s and Publix. He scored the Gillette ad on a computer/midi set up in his office in Hughes Hall.
Kenyatta Beasley smiles as he says he’s “a rookie professor” in the School of Music. “Luck is what brought me to Ohio State.” He had a friend who was a jazz lecturer here about five years ago. He told Ted McDaniel, head of jazz studies, about Beasley. “When a jazz trumpet/arranger faculty position was created, McDaniel called me, and I applied," he said.
“I always imagined being a professor, maybe in my 40s or 50s, not in my 30s," said Beasley. He has great respect for teachers. “Taking something that’s complex and making it simpler so students can learn is difficult,” he said.
He teaches trumpet, jazz trumpet, jazz arranging, and works with students in the Music, Media, and Enterprise program. He shows them how to work with technology.
"There are fewer and fewer playing opportunities. Students need to open themselves to an array of ways to make music, like arranging and recording," he said. Scoring a commercial in his office gives him the idea to develop a new course down the line.
Beasley was born in New Orleans. His father was a musician, a trumpet player. At age three, he picked up his father’s trumpet and blew. “I actually played a note." That got his father’s attention.
He downplays the accomplishment, “It’s not uncommon in New Orleans to play well at a young age; it’s part of the culture.”
He went on tour with his father to Italy and England and found fame as a child prodigy, playing on stages across America. He graduated from the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, a pre-professional arts training center with such illustrious graduates as Terence Blanchard, Wynton and Branford Marsalis, and Harry Connick, Jr.
Beasley discovered his passion in 1992. “I fell in love the with whole concept of film scoring watching Spike Lee’s film Malcolm X.” His idol, trumpeter Terence Blanchard, scored the film. “It’s fascinating how music becomes another character in the film—one that is heard but not seen," he said.
He moved to New York in 1994 and followed a bachelor’s degree from the Mannes School of Music with a master’s degree in music composition and film scoring from NYU. His first prize-winning score for a short film, Earnie, came in 2004. By 2005 more opportunities for scoring short and feature films and commercials came his way, as well as additional awards.
This summer he returns for a second time as a Sundance Composers Lab Fellow. “It’s a non-traditional cutting edge two-week program in Park City, Utah,” he said. "Much of the time is spent meeting with different film composers.”
Beasley offers students some valuable wisdom from his father, “When you’re in music, you have to do more than two things. No gig lasts forever. I try to tell my students, 'You’ve got to liberate your mind. You’re not just a trumpet player, not just a jazz pianist.'”
And about luck, he offers his own wisdom, “Luck is great, but you have to be ready for the opportunity.”
