Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute will launch NYO (National Youth Orchestra) Jazz, a four-week intensive summer program for young American jazz instrumentalists (ages 16-19), in the summer of 2018. The program will bring teenaged jazz musicians from across the country together to work and train with their peers under a world-class faculty. Trumpeter, composer, and educator Sean Jones will lead NYO Jazz as its first artistic advisor and will direct the big band’s debut performance at Carnegie Hall in July 2018.
“We are excited to extend our acclaimed NYO initiatives from the classical realm to the world of jazz,” said Clive Gillinson, Carnegie Hall’s executive and artistic director. “NYO Jazz will offer the country’s brightest young jazz musicians unique opportunities to make music together, alongside the chance to be mentored by the finest jazz players, led by Sean Jones, a distinguished artist and dedicated educator with a deep commitment to cultivating young musicians. There is a wealth of talent across the country due to the variety of well-developed school and community jazz programs. NYO Jazz seeks to further develop students’ musical gifts and share their artistry with American and international audiences as superb musical youth ambassadors for the U.S.”
NYO Jazz musicians will be in residency for two weeks at Purchase College, State University of New York, to train, rehearse, and collaborate among the three NYO ensembles. NYO Jazz will be free of charge to all participants. – L.S.
Lew Shaw started writing about music as the publicist for the famous Berkshire Music Barn in the 1960s. He joined the West Coast Rag in 1989 and has been a guiding light to this paper through the two name changes since then as we grew to become The Syncopated Times. 47 of his profiles of today's top musicians are collected in Jazz Beat: Notes on Classic Jazz.Volume two, Jazz Beat Encore: More Notes on Classic Jazz contains 43 more! Lew taps his extensive network of connections and friends throughout the traditional jazz world to bring us his Jazz Jottings column every month.
