The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music will celebrate its 20th anniversary this month with a concert featuring many of its famous alumni playing alongside their mentors. The June 20 show is designed to highlight the school’s teaching method, which emphasizes a close student-mentor relationship. The concert will feature jazz trumpet alum Roy Hargrove playing in a trio with saxophonist Jimmy Heath (pictured) and bebop pianist Barry Harris, as well as pianist Fred Hersch collaborating with his student, the experimental saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom. Other scheduled performers include jazz guitarists Jim Hall and Peter Bernstein, drummers Chico Hamilton and Bernard “Pretty” Purdie, bass player Reggie Workman, trumpeter Charles Tolliver and pianist Junior Mance.
The New School was the first university to offer a course in jazz in 1948, and the music school was officially founded in 1986 by David Levy and jazz saxophonist Arnie Lawrence.
The anniversary concert is June 20, 7:30 p.m. at the Tishman Auditorium: 66 West 12th St. in Manhattan. General admission tickets cost $15, and are available through the New School’s Web site.
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