Mark Foster, Jazz Chair
ALL-STATE JAZZ ENSEMBLE
Greetings! I hope everyone had a relaxing summer and a great start to the
school year. In addition to marching band, fall is the time to help your students prepare for the all-state jazz ensemble auditions. Please check the ABA website for audition requirements and registration information. Students have to perform a recorded audition on CD, which consists of two jazz standards (which includes some improvisation), an etude, and some scales. I have tried to make the improvisation as logical and easy to understand as possible this year. Students should be able to improvise with just a few scales, so please don’t let your students get intimidated by the improv component. We have 2 high school and 1 middle school all-state jazz ensembles in Alabama. Last year we had 190 students audition for the bands, I would like to see this number grow substantially this year, so please encourage your students to audition for the band. We would really like to see the middle school numbers grow.
----Remember to allow enough preparation time to get recordings completed and mailed by November 7, 2014.
ALL-STATE JAZZ CLINICIANS
I am excited to report that we have three outstanding clinicians for the 2015 all- state jazz bands.
1. Dr. Tom Walsh will be directing the gold jazz band. Dr. Walsh is the director of jazz studies at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He has an outstanding jazz program at Indiana, and he has performed all over the world as a saxophonist. Dr. Walsh holds 3 degrees from Indiana University.
2. Dr. Bob Lark will be directing the silver jazz band. Dr. Lark is the director of jazz studies at DePaul University in Chicago. He has performed with just about every big name jazz cat in the world, and has released many recordings with the DePaul jazz band. Dr. Lark holds a doctorate from the University of North Texas.
3. Sallie Vines White will be directing the middle school jazz band. Mrs. White has one of the strongest high school jazz programs in the United States at Hoover High School in Birmingham. Her “First Edition” jazz band performed at the Midwest Clinic in 2012 and the Jazz Education Network Conference in 2014. She holds a masters degree from Indiana University. All three of these clinicians are truly top-notch jazz educators, and I am confident they will provide an excellent experience for your students.
TIPS ON HELPING STUDENTS PREPARE FOR THE ALL-STATE JAZZ AUDITIONS
It is important that students learn style and the best way to learn this is by listening to other performers play jazz. We need to teach students to become connoisseurs and collectors of all types of music, especially jazz. They have lots of resources in their hands at all times by just accessing the internet and listening. I have been working on performing the jazz standard “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” and I wanted to get some additional interpretations. I looked on itunes and found 1,300 recordings of this song within a few seconds. I downloaded 5 versions by different artists in order to get a varying range of interpretations. Students can use this and youtube to learn the pieces for all- state jazz band auditions. Have your students download 5-10 versions of the audition pieces. They should listen to them as much as possible. They might try to do a “take-down” of the solos by writing them down on staff paper or using a music software program. They shouldn’t use these solos in their audition cd, but this is a great way to get ideas for their own improvisation and ideas for stylistic interpretation.
Please feel free to contact me if I can be of assistance to you in any way with your jazz programs, and I hope you will encourage your students to audition for the all-state jazz ensembles. I wish everyone a great school year.
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August/September 2014
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