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January 2005:
In New York City and Boston
there are both two great jazz schools. New York City’s
Uptown-based Manhattan School of
Music and the Downtown-located New School Jazz Program are ideal places to learn the music
from history to present. In Boston there is Berklee College of
Music and the New England
Conservatory, both of which produce many a talented jazz musician (NEC
has given us Cecil Taylor and Matthew Shipp, Berklee trained David S. Ware
and George Garzone, among many others). There are also many specialty schools across the
nation. For instance, if one wants to learn arranging in the style of
Carla Bley, Rochester is their best bet. University of North Texas has
the top composition school. The strength of the Jacksonville based
University of North Florida’s program (where I attended a summer jazz
camp in high school) is well known. It has given us trumpeter Terrence Blanchard,
among many others. On the West Coast there is Cal Arts (where
tenor saxophonist Ravi
Coltrane went to school) and Seattle’s Cornish Institute (the school
that alto saxophonist Briggan Krauss attended). Back on the East Coast, Wynton’s new
Julliard Program at Lincoln Center in New York City is turning heads.
Ohio's Oberlin’s jazz school is known for
their workshops with high profile artists. All of these programs have
progressive elements to them (though not to the extent of Bennington
College in Vermont).
In my case, jazz education was an
entirely passive experience. I was interested in playing avant-garde
jazz from the 1960s, and there were very few classes that allowed me to
do so. I was also very influenced by New York City’s Vision Festival
community of free improvisers in Downtown Manhattan, and I came to find there names and styles
blacklisted in academia. At my school, other free players in the
past have had trouble with the curriculum, yet I struggled the most. It
is just very different to attend night clubs and buy albums which
feature musicians playing a particular style, then not be allowed to
mimic that style during training. What surprised me even more was that
my school had faculty members who were world-renowned for playing
avant-garde music, yet in class their direction was straight-ahead. I
guess if you want to play both genres (free and inside) like artists
such as Dave Douglas or James Carter, then jazz education is okay for
you. But if you are feverishly committed to playing only avant-garde music,
then a college degree in jazz will not help. My recommendation is to
find a very capable private teacher (in the field of your choosing) and
save yourself the tuition. There are many successful players, such as
pianist Myra Melford, who have done this and came out ahead of musicians who
embarked on an expensive, unneeded 4 year educational program in jazz.
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