JALC Announces 2006 Band Directors Academy Sessions

On June 12, Jazz at Lincoln Center announced its seventh annual Band Directors Academy, drawing band directors from North America and South Africa. BDA is intended to give instructors educational tools that can be directly applied to the classroom, covering a variety of areas such as performance, history, pedagogy and discussion. The program will give jazz educators new methods for teaching students of all ages, from pre-kindergarten through high school. BDA is the companion program to Essentially Ellington, another Jazz at Lincoln Center project aiming to spread the study of Ellington’s work among high school jazz bands. This year’s BDA will focus on teaching improvisation and rhythm.

“Jazz at Lincoln Center’s ultimate goal is to see the arts in America, specifically the musical arts, achieve the prominence they deserve in our educational curriculum,” said JALC Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis (pictured) in a press release.

BDA’s first session, Teaching Improvisation, will be held at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich. on July 6-8. Class topics include “Vocal Concepts & Internalizing Rhythm in Jazz Style and Articulation,” “Motivating a Young Improviser,” “Teaching Improvisation in a Large Group Setting,” and “Voice Leading and Transcribing.”

The second session, Rhythm Section Techniques, will be held at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall on July 13-15. Classes include pedagogy classes on guitar, piano, bass and drums, as well as classes that examine the interaction between those instruments.

The program will be led by jazz education greats such as Ron Carter of Northern Illinois University, Scott Brown of Roosevelt High School in Seattle, Steve Kirby of the University of Manitoba, James Chirillo, Dana Hall of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Reggie Thomas of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and Rodney Whitaker of Michigan State University.

For more information, visit jalc.org.

Originally Published June 24, 2006