CLOCKWISE, FROM BELOW: Charlie Haden leads a master class at Locke High School in Los Angeles. • Stanley Jordan takes questions from public school students at Institute master class • Lisa Henry and Bobby Watson lead a Peer-to-Peer education program in Minneapolis with students from the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. BOTTOM: Students from Washington Preparatory High School in Los Angeles perform at a culminating concert at the Jazz Bakery.
In The
Classroom
The Institute’s new Peer-to-Peer Jazz Education Tour initiative brings gifted jazz students from leading performing arts high schools and nationally renowned jazz musicians into underserved public high schools throughout the nation. The musicians present informances for each school’s entire student body and perform for adult audiences at jazz clubs and other venues. During master classes with each high school’s jazz band, the visiting student performers play alongside their like-instrument counterparts, providing hands-on tutelage peer-to-peer. As Thelonious Monk, Jr., Chairman of the Institute’s Board of Trustees, remarked, “As young people are so influenced by kids their own age, who better to expose them to this great American art form than those of their own generation?” The Peer-to-Peer program began in 2006, when students from the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts traveled with saxophonist Bobby Watson to the Minneapolis and St. Paul public schools. In 2007, students from the Booker T. Washington High School for Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas performed for Los Angeles public school students. In 2008, talented students from performing arts high schools in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC will travel to Salt Lake City, Anchorage, and Miami, respectively.