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Arts & Entertainment

Jazz Arts Academy Showcases Young Talent

Youth Showcase at Zebu Forno plays to standing room only.

The Jazz Arts Academy presented its Youth Showcase to a standing room only crowd recently at Zebu Forno in Red Bank. The show included students from the winter semester led by special guest, noted jazz saxophonist and Academy instructor Bruce Williams.

The Jazz Arts Academy is a year-round comprehensive training program providing real world experience to aspiring teen jazz musicians. The training, a 10-week program, which is hosted at the Count Basie studios, includes the insights and instruction of professional musicians and music educators provided by the Jazz Arts Project. The instruction is designed to augment the music education and cultural enlightenment of area youth.

The Jazz Arts Project is dedicated to preserving, promoting, and perpetuating the American musical art form known as jazz, which the organization considers, “America’s classical music” form. The organization produces performances, creates educational programs about jazz and its history and serves as an advocate by continuing efforts to raise awareness of the art form in the public eye through lectures, workshops and publications.

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Bruce Williams of the Count Basie Orchestra and the Roy Hargrove Big Band led the showcase performance. Williams reminded the full house of the hard work that students put in to create the beautiful and smooth sound that the audience was treated to.

“This is a very difficult art form to master,” he said. “It’s about connecting things together to make logical statements and these songs were learned over just ten weeks and some of them are very tough tunes.”

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Jazz Arts Project Artistic Director and co-founder, Joe Muccioli, himself an internationally known conductor, orchestrator, musicologist producer, reemphasized Williams statement in speaking to the crowd.

“These kids are terrific,” he said.  “They say comedy is hard, but really jazz is harder.  This is an incredibly cerebral art and there’s a lot going on in what they’re performing here.”

Participation in The Jazz Arts Academy is through audition only. The age range of participants is 13 to 19 years old. Many of the students are already enrolled in additional musical instruction, including study at their respective high schools as well as extra-curricular programs like Bruce Gallipani’s Rockit Live, also at the Basie. To be considered for the Academy students must have a minimum of two years experience playing and studying their instrument.

Jazz Arts Academy students are assigned to an ensemble with musicians of similar ability. Each ensemble receives a weekly coaching session focuses on improvisation, ensemble playing, the history of jazz, learning the standards of the jazz repertory, and general musicianship. From time to time students will be able to attend special free additional sessions, workshops and jam sessions.

Muccioli has gathered and continues to gather world-class jazz players and mentors to fill the faculty of the Academy. “We recruit internationally known jazz recording artists who have the knowledge and experience of working with young players in order to bring a real-world, comprehensive course to the students,” he said.

Muccioli asserted that while all faculty members have professional schedules that take them to gigs and tours all over the world, the work of educating young players is essential to them because of the importance of the art form and their personal commitment to nurturing the next generation of musicians, particularly as budget constraints affect school music programs.

The Jazz Arts Academy also offers needs-based tuition assistance. The organization believes that “at-risk and underserved students benefit in remarkable ways” from their programs and therefore they have made a commitment to include anyone in the program regardless of whether they can afford the tuition or not. The Academy seeks outside funding and support to underwrite this inclusive policy. The Academy also seeks and accepts donations of instruments for the same means.

“We have seen first hand the effect this music has on audiences and students throughout the world,” Muccioli said. “We know that the study of jazz opens up worlds of opportunity and can indeed change a life.”

In celebration of National Jazz Appreciation Month, a gala to benefit the Academy will be held on April 2 at Butterfly Fine Arts Gallery in Red Bank.

For more information about the Jazz Arts Academy or the Jazz Arts Project visit them on the web at: www.jazzartsproject.org.

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