High School Jazz

"High School Jazz is the culmination of 40 years of teaching jazz. It is designed to give you clear instructions as well as the reasoning behind why I make these suggestions. I currently travel to high schools around the country doing clinics with jazz bands. The band directors are among the best high school jazz band directors in the country, and yet I am able to transform their bands in 15 minutes. In this book I am going to tell you exactly my procedure and how to do it. At first some of these things I say and do may sound strange or even counterintuitive, but I have used them hundreds, maybe even thousands of times, and they work for me." - David Berger I already have an excellent high school band. What can I learn from this book? High School Jazz is designed to serve all high school band directors regardless of experience and expertise. It deals with the most basic issues to the most complex in a deep way. Even the most seasoned teachers will find information that is known only by top professionals and is of great value to their students. I teach a teaching methods course for music education majors at a college. Would this book be appropriate for my students? Absolutely! It would be indispensable. Very often the high school concert band conductor will be responsible for teaching the jazz ensemble. High School Jazz explains how to teach, what to teach, and gives valuable resources.

Written by an experienced and diverse lineup of veteran jazz educators, Teaching School Jazz presents a comprehensive approach to teaching beginning through high school-level jazz. Thoroughly grounded in the latest research, chapters are supported by case studies woven into the narrative. The book therefore provides not only a wealth of school jazz teaching strategies but also the perspectives and principles from which they are derived. The book opens with a philosophical foundation to describe the current landscape of school jazz education. Readers are introduced to two expert school jazz educators who offer differing perspectives on the subject. The book concludes with an appendix of recommended audio, visual, digital, and written resources for teaching jazz. Accompanied by a website of playing exercises and audio examples, the book is invaluable resource for pre- and in-service music educators with no prior jazz experience, as well as those who wish to expand their knowledge of jazz performance practice and pedagogy.

The Listening Book is about rediscovering the power of listening as an instrument of self-discovery and personal transformation. By exploring our capacity for listening to sounds and for making music, we can awaken and release our full creative powers. Mathieu offers suggestions and encouragement on many aspects of music-making, and provides playful exercises to help readers appreciate the connection between sound, music, and everyday life.

This volume was the first published jazz teaching method. One of America's greatest musician-teachers, David Baker, shows how to develop jazz courses and jazz ensembles, with lesson plans, rehearsal techniques, practice suggestions, improvisational ideas, and ideas for school and private teachers and students.

DVD provides over three hours of audio and video demonstrations of rehearsal techniques and teaching methods for jazz improvisation, improving the rhythm section, and Latin jazz styles.

Learning Jazz: Jazz Education, History, and Public Pedagogy addresses a debate that has consumed practitioners and advocates since the music's early days. Studies on jazz learning typically focus on one of two methods: institutional education or the kinds of informal mentoring relationships long associated with the tradition. Ken Prouty argues that this distinction works against a common identity for audiences and communities. Rather, what happens within the institution impacts—and is impacted by—events and practices outside institutional contexts. While formal institutions are well-defined in educational and civic contexts, informal institutions have profoundly influenced the development of jazz and its discourses. Drawing on historical case studies, Prouty details significant moments in jazz history. He examines the ways that early method books capitalized on a new commercial market, commandeering public expertise about the music. Chapters also discuss critic Paul Eduard Miller and his attempts to develop a jazz canon, as well as the disconnect between the spotlighted “great men” and the everyday realities of artists. Tackling race in jazz education, Prouty explores the intersections between identity and assessment; bandleaders Stan Kenton and Maynard Ferguson; public school segregation; Jazz at Lincoln Center; and more. He further examines jazz’s “public pedagogy,” and the sometimes-difficult relationships between “jazz people” and the general public. Ultimately, Learning Jazz posits that there is room for both institutional and noninstitutional forces in the educational realm of jazz.

(Meredith Music Resource). Student Supplement Book 2 is a continuation of the many concepts and exercises presented in Book 1. The exercises focus the thinking process while expanding student awareness and sensitivity to musical expression. This high priority develops timed mental activity and accuracy throughout the ensemble.

More than fifty years ago, John Coltrane drew the twelve musical notes in a circle and connected them by straight lines, forming a five-pointed star. Inspired by Einstein, Coltrane put physics and geometry at the core of his music. Physicist and jazz musician Stephon Alexander follows suit, using jazz to answer physics' most vexing questions about the past and future of the universe. Following the great minds that first drew the links between music and physics-a list including Pythagoras, Kepler, Newton, Einstein, and Rakim-The Jazz of Physics reveals that the ancient poetic idea of the Music of the Spheres," taken seriously, clarifies confounding issues in physics. The Jazz of Physics will fascinate and inspire anyone interested in the mysteries of our universe, music, and life itself.