University of Denver Winter 2023

MAKING HISTORY

Barbara Perkins caps triathlon season with NCAA Coach of the Year honor

season, they kept talking about it, and they wanted to do it as a team. I think that helped us stay motivated and focused.” The team’s third-place finish on Nov. 12 at the 2022 Collegiate National Championships in Tempe, Arizona, was not only the highlight of the season but also the highest result by a women’s individual program at a national cham pionship event in school history. Perkins led the Pioneers to five other podium finishes during the regular season. Denver finished first or second in all their races prior to nationals, including team wins at the Southern Hills Triathlon on Sept. 3 in Hot Springs, South Dakota, and at Bearathlon on Oct. 30 in Berkeley, California. She also stepped up to organize the inaugural Mile High Relays, held on the DU campus, in late September with just a few weeks’ notice when a scheduled event in Utah was canceled. The ability to adapt served Perkins and the team well. “We started from the bottom, ground zero,” she says. After two years of hard work and building a rock-solid culture of teamwork and support, she adds, a national championship feels within their grasp. “That is the ultimate goal,” Perkins says. “I want to do it the right way. I want the team to be super close and motivated like we have been, continuing to bring in the right people and keep that strong team dynamic so we can do it together.” bridge but also a continuation of the first album,” he says, noting that both record titles have the same initials and number of syllables. “I’m kind of finishing the first statement and opening the door to where I plan on going.” Before coming to Denver in August, Le Boeuf spent 18 years in New York, where he attended the Manhattan School of Music and began his professional career. He has collab orated with a wide range of musicians, including the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and his twin brother Pascal, with whom he co-leads the experimen tal jazz quintet, Le Boeuf Brothers. Growing up in Santa Cruz, California, Le Boeuf started playing the oboe when he was 10 and picked up the saxo phone a year later. The first jazz album that became an obsession was Charles Mingus’ “Mingus Ah Um.” “I listened to pretty much nothing else for about a year,” he says. “I wanted to absorb it; I wanted to become that music. I wanted to listen to it as I slept and wake up being able to play everything on the saxophone—you know, some very childlike, innocent but kind of beautiful way of seeing the world.” Not long after, he started using his sister’s old karaoke

When Barbara Perkins came to DU in July 2020 as the first women’s triathlon head coach, she had one month to put together a competitive team—during COVID, no less. Never could she have imagined that two years later her fledgling

Photo by Morgan Engel/Clarkson Creative via DU Athletics.

team would take third place at the national championships and, to top off the stellar season, she would be named NCAA Division I Coach of the Year. “It was a huge honor. It’s a testament to the team and how far we’ve come in such a short period of time and how hard they’ve worked,” she says. “They believed that we were capable of getting up on the podium this year, so the whole

HIGH NOTES

Lamont’s Remy Le Boeuf scores multiple Grammy nominations

As a saxophonist, composer and the Lamont School of Music’s new director of Jazz & Commercial Music Studies, Remy Le Boeuf has always had “big ideas” about music— ideas that have led to a successful career as a jazz innovator and, most recently, as composer and arranger of two Grammy-nominated albums. In mid-November, his album, “Architecture of Storms,” was nominated for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album, and his arrangement of a song by indie rock musician Bon Iver called “Minnesota, WI” garnered a second nomination in the category of Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella. Called a “big record” in terms of ambition, scale and degree of difficulty, “Architecture of Storms” is the second album Le Boeuf has produced with his 20-person jazz orches tra. His 2019 debut album, “Assembly of Shadows,” earned Grammy nominations for Best Instrumental Composition and Best Arrangement. Le Boeuf’s music is rooted in traditional jazz but influ enced by contemporary classical and indie rock. “Architecture of Storms” is a transitional album, demonstrating an indie rock-influence with his jazz orchestra. It’s “kind of like a

10 | UNIVERSITY of DENVER MAGAZINE • WINTER 2023