Anthony Plog on Music

Conversations with performers, composers, and entrepreneurs

Jon Armstrong: The Highly-Creative and Innovative Jazz Saxophonist, former LA Freelancer, Bandleader, Composer and current Professor of Jazz Studies and Commercial Music at Idaho State University

Anthony Plog, host
Eddie Ludema, producer
Date posted: Mar 29, 2024

Jon Armstrong is an amazingly versatile performer, composer, educator and thinker. Perhaps that should come as no surprise, since as a young man in his home town in Oregon, Jon not only played in a Buddhist marching band but also worked 12 hour shifts in a diaper factory! After a highly successful career in LA, he now teaches at Idaho State University, where he's established a fantastic commercial music program, while still performing and composing and at an extremely high level.


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Part 1

Jon grew up in Corvallis, Oregon, and at a very young age was already deeply involved in music, learning any instrument he could get his hands on and playing in a variety of groups. His studies at the California Institute for the Arts were followed by seven years in Los Angeles, where he worked as a freelancer, band-leader and composer... and also founded three educational jazz programs! He moved to Pocatello to become Director of Jazz Studies at Idaho State University in 2015, which he has evolved into the new Commercial Music Program. Much of our discussion centers around his thoughts on pedagogy and building the commercial music program.

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In addition to his other creative work, Jon also has his own radio show called "Don't Call it Jazz," referring to a Miles Davis quote. We also get into other various subjects, including tennis and basketball (and how they apply to music.) But for most of Part 2, we discuss what Jon calls the "modern sickness that has infected the academic jazz world" and how his ideas try to break free from the strictly academic way of teaching jazz that's found in many of today's institutions.



The podcast theme music, Four Sierra Scenes, written by Anthony Plog, is taken from Crystal Records S205, copyright ©1980 Crystal Records Inc., and is used by permission. Unauthorized duplication is not permitted.