Sacramento Jazz Education Foundation is the new name of the former Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society Foundation. The foundation is also introducing its new logo and web address – sacjef.org.
The mission of the Foundation remains the same — to preserve and promote early jazz music, by supporting the education of current and future generations in the performance of early jazz, and in the history and appreciation of America’s true original art form, and to work collaboratively with other local, regional and national jazz educational organizations to accomplish this mission.
Through donations and endowments, the Foundation sponsors and manages programs such as:
The Teagarden Jazz Camp – two one-week annual summer jazz camps
Traditional Jazz Youth Band Festival held in partnership with CSUS in February
Music Lessons Awards – presented annually to approximately 25 young musicians so they can afford private music lessons with an emphasis on Jazz.
TNT – The New Traditionalists, a regional honor band of High School jazz musicians
Instrument Match – a program to match donated instruments with youth musicians
The Trad Jazz Project – a partnership with local schools to sponsor clinics and music instructors to teach traditional jazz in school band programs.
“We are excited about this new chapter in our Foundation’s history,” states William Au,
President of the Board. “We are on solid financial footing and our programs have seen great
growth in the last three years. The new name and brand fit with our core mission of passing the
torch of jazz music to the next generation.”
An outgrowth of the former Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society, the Foundation formed in 1996
in anticipation of a large donation from a trust to fund the annual Youth Jazz Camp – now
known as the Teagarden Jazz Camp. The Society rightly felt that the best way to manage this
and other endowments, and to ensure that it was used for the express purpose of youth jazz
education, was to create a separate foundation to invest and manage these funds along with
other donations. The Foundation established its own board of directors and 501c(3) separate
and distinct from the Society.
More than 95% of the donations received by the Foundation are earmarked specifically for one
or more of the youth education programs. For more information on the Sacramento Jazz Education Foundation and its programs, visit sacjef.org
