The setting was the same -- the cavernous Southwick Ballroom on Redstone campus -- but it was no ordinary rehearsal of the UVM Jazz Ensemble, the university's first-string student big band. Witness the collection of 30-plus jazz fans, students, and music faculty, including trumpeter Ray Vega, flutist Patricia Julien, guitarist Joe Capps, and trombonist Rick Davies, who were seated casually in a jumble of chairs and desks strewn around the former gym. What attracted the crowd was the chance to observe members of the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, the most respected big band in jazz, according to Jazz Ensemble director Alex Stewart, work with student musicians. The VJO was in town for a concert at the Flynn Theater Friday night and squeezed in the two-hour UVM workshop just before a 6 p.m. Meet the Artists session. And what a workshop it was. After listening to a run through of the Buddy Rich classic, "You Gotta Try," trombonist and VJO director John Mosca (pictured) quickly identified a problem passage that had plagued the brass section all semester. The problem wasn't the players, he said; it was the overcomplicated arrangement. Mosca lost no time sharing a solution inspired by one of his former bandmates -- Buddy Rich himself. When the Buddy Rich Big Band, of which Mosca was a member for several years, got to this passage at one rehearsal, the mercurial drummer, who was "roaring" on his instrument by then, stopped the ensemble in its tracks and said, in Mosca's telling, "What are you guys doing? It's getting in the way." Kneeling in the brass section, pencil in hand, Mosca scribbled on the students' sheet music the fix the Rich band had quickly adopted at the drummer's urging, "before something worse happened." Mosca swapped a complicated "buh-GOOM, buh-GOOM, buh-GOOM" rhythm for a simpler "aah, aah, ahh" one. "Oh man, what a difference," the delighted Stewart said after the band ran the edited passage. "Charts are just a guide," he explained to students. "In the real world musicians change this stuff all the time." After the session with the full band, members of the VJO held sectional rehearsals with the trumpet, trombone, saxophone, and rhythm sections in rooms spread out around the music building complex. At one of the sessions, tenor sax man Ralph LaLama (pictured) worked on the five sax players' ensemble sound, likening it to a church organ's even, sustained tones. "You don't have one finger that wants to stick out," he said. LaLama also urged students to get their horns vibrating, even in soft sections, helpfully demonstrating with a virtuoso solo rendition of the classic, "Body and Soul," that shook the room. "The really valuable thing about this was that we usually we have one guest artist" working with students, Stewart said, who has brought luminaries ranging from Wynton Marsalis to Carla Bley to UVM in the past. "But this time we had players from every section of the band," who coached the full ensemble, played side-by-side with students, and ran the sectionals. "There was no way one person could have all that knowledge," he said. "It's probably the best big band master class clinic that we've ever had and that I could imagine having."' Junior biology major Meghan Maslen agreed. "It was really great to be able to not only let them hear us" but to play with the master musicians. "It gives you an extra energy," she said. "It's also really nice to hear fresh advice, especially from guys who are so experienced and have been playing for so long." For "You Gotta Try," at least, the advice seemed to be paying off. After a complete run through -- with the band displaying the solid rhythmic feel VJO members had been pushing them to achieve -- there was applause and a few shouts of "yeah" from the musicians. "If you can't dance to that," Mosca said, "you can't dance."