As finals loom, soothing jazz music may help students relax. The music department’s jazz concert will give students a chance to enjoy jazz for free Wednesday night.

The concert will showcase what students in the small jazz ensembles class have learned during the semester.

A sampling of the music includes two original student compositions, one arrangement based on a Nintendo game and an experimental song “Eolis” by Ryan Alley, sophomore in music and student composer, which ends on a punk rock note and the classic jazz tune “My Funny Valentine.”

“You never know what’s going to end up happening,” said Michael Giles, lecturer of music who teaches the jazz class, speaking of the creative freedom students have in their work.

The students will also perform classic jazz songs, but in a unique manner.

They memorized the songs’ chord progressions and melodies, but they’re not given anything more to work with. Students then have to work together to come up with all the right in-betweens and extras in the musical performance, Giles said.

“Jazz music has an oral tradition, so the bulk of our music has been passed down and developed by ear,” he said.

But the intuitiveness of such a method is not always a strength of someone in music school, he said. To help counteract that weakness, each group had to learn something by ear.

“That forces the oral tradition on them,” Giles said. His goal is to help each group develop a “self-sufficient ensemble.”

Giles said many music majors are grounded in the restrictions and discipline of formal study, which are helpful, but creativity is also important.

“Some of our kids haven’t fully realized their creative abilities,” he said.

Samantha Deaton, freshman in music who will be playing the drums in a beginners’ combo for the concert, said she’s found the jazz class to be helpful. Before Giles’s class, she had played jazz on the piano but not on the drumset.

“This will help me teach jazz when I get out of college,” Deaton said.

The other students in her combo are on the same level, which allows for learning without too much intimidation, she said. “Eolis” is Deaton’s favorite of her combos’ tunes.

Ari Micich, sophomore in music and trumpet player who will perform in one of the more-experienced combos, said the material he will perform is challenging, but he feels confident he will perform well.

Micich has been performing since his junior year in high school.

He started playing the trumpet in elementary school, inspired by his dad, who’s a trumpet player, as well.

“I just can’t see myself doing anything else,” he said.

All students performing in the concert have been rehearsing twice a week this semester – once with Giles and once on their own – and Giles said they had to figure out a group rapport.

“It’s jazz. It’s improvising. That’s at the core of jazz music,” he said.