If you’ve shared a biology class or a lab section with Oliver Kim ’27, you’ve probably seen him at the lab bench, pipette in hand, working carefully through protocols. As a double major in biochemistry and biology, he finds nothing in these subjects is left to chance. Every step is planned, and every variable is controlled.
Hand him a trombone, though, and plans go out the window. Outside the lab, Oliver is a jazz musician who lets his intuition lead; he takes whatever the band hands him and whatever inspiration strikes in the moment, and combines them into a story no one has heard before.
Oliver’s story with the trombone began in fourth grade. He remembers a school demonstration where teachers walked through each instrument in turn, but one stood out. “It was kind of just the biggest and brassiest one,” Oliver said. “And at the time, I was just like, ‘That’s really cool. That’s for me.’”
At four or five, he had tried piano out, but it never stuck.
“I was a pretty small kid … my fingers were kind of short. It just felt kind of clunky.” Of course, the trombone isn’t exactly built for small hands either. “It’s really not an ergonomic instrument at all,” he admits. Still, nine-year-old Oliver went with the loudest option in the room.
The trombone came first, and jazz soon followed. Before becoming a jazz musician, Oliver remembers jazz mostly as background music on family road trips. It finally struck a chord in sixth grade in Seattle, a city where jazz education is taken very seriously. “These jazz bands were just amazing for how young these people were,” Oliver said. “Even by the seventh and eighth grade, people were already playing at a very professional level.”
Playing next to older, more experienced musicians left him feeling out of his element, but it also pushed him. By late middle school, he was busking, playing local gigs, performing with a competitive ensemble, and eventually helping teach a summer camp. He even auditioned and was accepted to a conservatory jazz program, but he decided not to go.
“It seemed to me kind of a one-dimensional place, and I wasn’t willing to kind of give up my other interests and parts of my identity,” he said. “That wasn’t really why I valued music in my life.”
Music didn’t need to be everything to mean something to Oliver. When Oliver plays, he is listening as much as he’s playing: catching where the bass is headed, how the drums are pushing. Years of listening have given him an intuition he trusts, and it gives him ideas to carry the conversation forward — “probably too many ideas,” he said with a laugh. The art is in choosing among them. “I have good ideas, but also enough patience to maybe not play them all at once, and maybe have a little bit of foresight.” When it all comes together, a solo becomes “a coherent storyline.”
That kind of give-and-take is what drew him to small-group jazz, the kind he loves listening to most. “It’s more of a dialogue,” he said. “It’s more of a conversation.” So in his first fall at Swarthmore, he started one of his own. He was surprised to find so many serious jazz musicians at a small liberal arts college, and with a few friends, they founded G7.
As for the name, it began as a headcount and a nod to the Group of Seven nations. “It was kind of nerdy in that way,” Oliver said. The group has since grown to around ten to twelve members, which makes the name a bit inaccurate. They’ve kept it anyway, for posterity (G12 just doesn’t have the same ring).
Lately, the group has moved past the standard repertoire, the “Blue Bossas” and “Autumn Leaves” that every jazz musician learns. “They’re called standards because they’re pretty standard,” Oliver explained. He paused, heard himself, and laughed. Right now they’re working on an Esperanza Spalding piece, which has been a puzzle. “There’s some interesting time going on. It’s a weird structure, weird form.” It’s hard, he said, but it;s also the most creative freedom he’s ever had. For most of his life, he played under a band director. In G7, the band makes the decisions themselves.
While he’s put a lot of energy into small-group jazz, he hasn’t left the bigger ensembles behind. Oliver brings his trombone to the Swarthmore Jazz Ensemble, where he has played every semester since freshman year. As lead trombonist, he shapes phrases and sets the sound for his section without taking center stage. Even there, his spontaneity never fully leaves. “Even if you’re not making the main creative decisions … you still have to be musical,” he said. “You’re not just a drone, really.”
With jazz being such a big part of his life, I couldn’t resist asking how he feels about the type of jazz that plays in coffee shops. “Is this a rage bait question?” he deadpanned before laughing it off. He knows the purist’s reaction, the “La La Land,” Ryan Gosling, “that’s not real jazz” reaction, and he partly agrees that jazz is much more than elevator music. But he doesn’t hold it against anyone who likes it in the background. He just can’t study to it himself, because his ears never switch off. “I would just find myself listening to what the bassist is doing,” he said. Biology homework wouldn’t stand a chance.
His advice to anyone who doesn’t “get” jazz yet? “I don’t think there’s anything to get.” He paused. “I mean, there’s stuff to get. I’ll take that back.” What he means is that there’s no single right way to appreciate jazz. His own taste has changed a lot since sixth grade, and even some of the famous classics, the ones that feature the so-called “greatest musicians of all time,” haven’t clicked for him yet. Though he wouldn’t name names, in case someone called him out. “I think there’s something for everyone. It’s a listening journey. It’s definitely changed me.”
If you’re ready to start your own listening journey, there’s no better first stop than hearing Oliver live. This semester, he’ll be performing in the Swarthmore Jazz Ensemble on Saturday, Nov. 22. When he takes the stage, he won’t be playing alone, and that’s the point. “Being part of something, contributing to something,” as Oliver puts it.
