Jazz Appreciation Month: Community and School Activities for Teachers

Build your pyramid

JAM falls in April—a great month to give your students additional opportunities to perform, to build public support for your jazz program, and to entice the next generation of students to take part in your ensembles. You can do all these things by scheduling informal concerts for your high school groups at the middle and elementary schools that feed your school population. Try:

• Scheduling a JAM concert, inviting parents and community, and extending a special invitation to your colleagues and their students.
• Taking it on the road to your feeder schools—either with your full jazz ensemble or trios or quartets formed out of your ensemble. Once again, your best bet is to work with your colleagues, the music teachers, who can help you negotiate the request to the local principal. (Since these events will likely be during the school day, don’t neglect to work with your own administration regarding your students’ absence.)
• Taking it on the road to other venues that attract kids. Your local library is a good example of a venue that might welcome a small ensemble of kids playing for other kids.
• Finding out if any of your colleagues at the middle level have included improvisation in their teaching. If so, ask if they would like your students (with appropriate coaching) to give master classes—it’s a real motivational and educational win for both the high school students and the younger students.
   

In all of these efforts, be as broad-based as possible. If you conduct the jazz band, don’t neglect to invite participation by your school’s vocal jazz ensemble, if you’re fortunate enough to have one. (If you don’t, maybe that’s a good subject for a conversation with the chorus teacher.)

Leveraging community resources

Most communities have professional, retired, and serious amateur musicians who would love to contribute to the school program—if you can only give them a structure within which to work. Here’s one such structure:

• Find appropriate musicians by asking your students to build and exploit a word-of-mouth network among parents, relatives, and acquaintances; or by calling the local American Federation of Musicians office.
• Establish a vetting process for these musicians. Not to be too bureaucratic, you will have to meet state and local regulations when you bring other adults into contact with your students, and when using that contact to build musical skill and knowledge, you will want to also find ways to politely make certain that the adults concerned really have something to offer the kids. You will probably find that you can use practically everybody who wants to participate—if only by having them talk to the class about what playing jazz has meant to them. But be discriminating in choosing those who function as model musicians.
• Don’t forget your alumni! Scheduling in students who graduated from your ensemble one, two, or a dozen years ago can be a real rush for them and for your current students, who will be able to relate to them on a level not necessarily the same as that they use in contact with musicians of their parents’ age.
   

Once you’ve found the musicians, how can you use them?

• As soloists. This is the most obvious solution, but obviously you must be most selective about this category.
• As “ringers” to play side-by-side with your students. This can be a real way of establishing and building new, multi-generational musical relationships.
• As mentors, telling students about the ways that playing jazz helped them develop and grow.
• As helpers. Once you make the connection with community musicians on the level of performance, you might find it easier to ask them for purely logistical support. When you do, you’ll find that you have developed support from folks who know their way around a jazz ensemble.