"Now, more than ever in the history of jazz, we have more resources than we can ever use. If we study the roots of the music and in particular, the process that was used to create the genre, we see that aural imitation and encouragement was pinnacle. Encourage your students to listen to great artists by listening with them. Give them short musical phrases, riffs, to assist them in learning the language. And finally, encourage them to take chances."
I recently wrote an article for Jazz Educators of Iowa titled "Am I Doing This Correctly?". It's featured in the January 2019 Newsletter on page 7. You can read the entire article here.
I have a variety of upcoming performances starting this week:
Monday January 14th @ 7pm @ The Greenwood Lounge w/ Courtney Krause, Scot Sutherland, Russ Tomlinson, and Dave Ducharme-Jones. A great group of people playing great music; this is going to be fun.
Tuesday January 15th @ 7pm @ Urbandale High School Performing Arts Center. My new love is conducting and I'm honored and excited to be conducting the Urbandale High School Wind Ensemble. We will be presenting three works for concert band: Flourish for Wind Band (1939) by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Song for Lyndsay (2007) by Andrew Boysen, and The Machine Awakes (2012) by Steven Bryant.
The evening will also include the 8th Grade Concert Band, and the High School Symphonic Band and Wind Symphony. The concert will also be lived streamed and can be viewed on J-Hawks Live.
Wednesday January 23rd @ 6pm @ Louie's Wine Dive w/ Scot Sutherland. I love playing with Scot because one minute we're playing a tune by Thelonius Monk and the next minute we're playing a tune by Nirvana.
Thursday January 24th @ 5pm-7pm @ State Historical Museum of Iowa w/ Scot Sutherland for History on the Rocks It's an evening of art and culture. Join us for a fun evening.
As always, thanks for reading.
