\u201cIt\u2019s such a strong word, but Michael has become an authority on the music of John Coltrane. He\u2019s made it his life\u2019s work to be so passionate about him,\u201d Mastroianni says. \u201cColtrane is one of the greatest jazz artists of all time, and Michael has spent the last few years transcribing and listening to him. The facts he can spit out about this man and about his legacy are absolutely astounding.\u201d<\/p>\n
Farina says Coltrane is both his biggest musical influence and a personal inspiration. And besides both playing tenor sax, the two also have something else in common \u2013 recognition from DownBeat magazine.<\/p>\n
Coltrane\u2019s came in 1965 when he was inducted into its prestigious Jazz Hall of Fame<\/a>. Farina\u2019s came this summer, when he was honored for Outstanding Performances<\/a>, one of six college undergraduates worldwide to make the list and the only tenor saxophonist.<\/p>\n The honor is one that surprised Farina, who recorded his audition after only one semester at UConn last year. DownBeat is known as the authority on jazz and its history, publishing reader polls and critical reviews since the 1930s that often have proved to make or break careers. To be featured in it at all is a feat, never mind as a first-year student.<\/p>\n Mastroianni says Farina was \u201cflabbergasted\u201d when he gave him the news because he just couldn\u2019t imagine he\u2019d ever receive such a distinction.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s a rare individual that has achieved a level of artistry that many professionals would aspire to,\u201d Mastroianni says. \u201cHe\u2019s going to be a formidable force in the music world. And one of the interesting things about him is that he\u2019s so quiet and humble. He has no idea how good he is.\u201d<\/p>\n Farina is the first student in the School of Fine Arts\u2019<\/a> new Bachelor of Music in Jazz<\/a> program, a more performance-heavy track than the existing Bachelor of Arts in Jazz Studies<\/a>. He wants to add in an English major and says he is unsure of what he\u2019ll do with the combined expertise but wants the rounded experience.<\/p>\n It\u2019s why he came to UConn, he says.<\/p>\n The University allows for many unlikely pairings of majors to fit students\u2019 goals. Plus, UConn is about 2\u00bd hours from Farina\u2019s hometown of Ossining, New York, close enough to family yet far enough to explore life on his own.<\/p>\n \u201cThe third reason is Professor Mastroianni,\u201d Farina says. \u201cHe\u2019s so wonderful and fun to be around, and he\u2019s such a good teacher, a real teacher. Sometimes professors give the sense they\u2019re teaching because it\u2019s a stable job. But Professor Mastroianni is a natural teacher, and you can sense it in the way he treats his students and how he talks to people.\u201d<\/p>\n He gave Farina an opportunity recently to take pen to paper and write a two-part series on Coltrane for the Connecticut Music Educators Association\u2019s magazine, in which Mastroianni writes the regular column, \u201cJohn\u2019s Jazz Corner.\u201d<\/p>\n Seeing his name in print is something Farina describes as thrilling – and this might not be the last time.<\/p>\n He\u2019s been writing music for small groups for a while, he says, but this summer restarted a larger project he began some time ago composing a piece for a full jazz ensemble.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the emphasis is going to be on the solo section,\u201d he says, adding, \u201cit\u2019s not as difficult as you might think because it\u2019s based on an arrangement that already exists, not a big band arrangement, though. I\u2019m taking a small group arrangement and adding my own stuff to it before finishing it and closing it off. I have an idea of where I\u2019m going with it and what elements of my own I want to put in.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it\u2019s a tough thing to do because you might have something that sounds good with the computer playing all the instruments, then once you get a band together to play it, you\u2019ll hear that something doesn\u2019t sound right, and you need to change it,\u201d he continues.<\/p>\n Along with Mastroianni, Farina credits his middle and high school teachers, his private instructors, and the Litchfield Jazz Camp, which he\u2019s attended the last three summers, with getting him to where he is today and giving him the drive to continue.<\/p>\n \u201cI like to solo,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s the core of jazz. There\u2019s so much that happens every time you perform a solo, especially when you\u2019re playing with musicians who you\u2019re comfortable with. The better you know the music and the musicians the more that soloing experience becomes musically dynamic. It can go off in a million different directions and that\u2019s really satisfying.\u201d<\/p>\n Mastroianni explains it like this: A solo that\u2019s performed at 9:57 on a Thursday morning will never be repeated because a jazz musician who is adept in improvisation \u2013 that is, spontaneous composition \u2013 will never repeat a solo verbatim.<\/p>\n It\u2019s something that\u2019s \u201ctotally lived in the moment,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cA jazz musician is judged on how they improvise and by their creative output. That\u2019s not to say people don\u2019t play \u2018licks\u2019 that they practice when they improvise, but, ideally, the same solo should never happen again, and that\u2019s the beauty of this art form,\u201d Mastroianni says.<\/p>\n Farina hasn\u2019t always been drawn to jazz, he admits, explaining that when he was a baby a musical toy in his crib was his first instrument. Then he started to listen to music geared to young children by Dan Zanes and graduated to Bruce Springsteen in preschool. The Beatles came in elementary school, and in fourth grade he picked up the saxophone, joining the jazz band in middle school.<\/p>\n \u201cI just liked how it sounded,\u201d he says of the saxophone. \u201cAs corny as it is, songs like \u2018Rockin\u2019 Around the Christmas Tree\u2019 sounded really good to me. I thought the instrument sounded cool and looked cool.\u201d<\/p>\n Since then, he\u2019s added to his repertoire of 100 songs tunes like \u201cThe Night Has a Thousand Eyes\u201d by Jerry Brainin, \u201cBut Not for Me\u201d by George and Ira Gershwin, and \u201cSummertime\u201d by George Gershwin.<\/p>\n \u201cMichael could get a full scholarship to any music school in the country and that\u2019s no exaggeration, but he came to UConn. Not only does he have a passion for music but also for English, and a wonderful thing about UConn is that he can study both,\u201d Mastroianni says. \u201cThat\u2019s a pretty cool thing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Michael Farina is one of six college undergraduates worldwide to make the list and the only tenor saxophonist<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":203294,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1711,1914,2235,2227,2458,2234],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2368],"class_list":["post-203271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","category-sfa","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-edu-homepage","category-undergraduates","category-university-life"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-02 18:43:52","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203271"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":204184,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203271\/revisions\/204184"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/203294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203271"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=203271"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=203271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Michael](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Concert-Photo-225x300.jpg\")