IAJE Holds 28th Annual Conferencein New York City

Ron McCurdy Photo courtesy of IAJE

The International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE) held its 28th Annual Conference in New York City from January 10-13, 2001. Approximately 8,000 educators, musicians, and industry representatives from 35 countries attended the event, which was hosted by the New York Hilton and Sheraton Hotels. The theme of this year’s conference was Jazz -- An International Language, focusing on the global influence of jazz.

At the 2001 Conference, attendees enjoyed evening concerts by such recognized artists as Cassandra Wilson, Pat Metheny, Medeski, Martin, & Wood, the Maria Schneider Orchestra, the Geri Allen Trio, John Patitucci, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra , the David Liebman Big Band, the Billy Taylor Trio; Eliane Elias Trio; and the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra.

Additionally over 150 artists and clinicians participated in a variety of performances and seminar programs including Ron Carter, Jane Ira Bloom, Jim McNeely, Bobby Sanabria, Lew Soloff, Paul Tobey, Gene Bertoncini, Hal Galper, Barry Harris, Bill Watrous, and the David Friesen-Uwe Kropinski Duo.

This year's conference inaugurated the 1st Annual IAJE Gala Dinner on Wednesday, January 10, hosted by Nancy Wilson. Jon Hendricks presented the IAJE President's Award to Ken Burns, producer of the PBS series Jazz. In addition, IAJE Past President Dr. Willie Hill was honored with the association's Lawrence Berk Leadership Award. Proceeds from the Gala benefited the IAJE Global Outreach Fund.

A mixed ensemble of Israeli and Arab students from Jerusalem's International Center of Creative Music and Peru's La Orquesta Juvenil de Musica Nueva were among the 35 outstanding student groups from around the world who performed at the conference. The Hall High School Jazz Ensemble from West Hartford, Connecticut, winners of the 2000 Jazz at Lincoln Center Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition, performed with Jazz at Lincoln Center Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis.

On Saturday, January 13, the IAJE Conference hosted the National Endowment for the Arts American Jazz Masters Awards for the 11th consecutive year. Hosted by Dr. Billy Taylor, the 2001 recipients each received a $20,000 fellowship, presented by NEA Chairman Bill Ivey. They are John Lewis, Jackie McLean, and Randy Weston.

Education was at the heart of the conference agenda, with more than 125 clinics and workshops on far-ranging topics and subjects such as jazz history, improvisation, technology, composition, arranging, and performance techniques. The conference also focused on teacher training, with session topics such as Teaching Jazz Improvisation To the Fearful and the Fearless and Using Call and Response to Teach Improvisation in General Music. Juilliard’s President, Dr. Joseph W. Polisi, was introduced to jazz educators at the January 12 panel moderated by IAJE President, Ron McCurdy, entitled Leadership in the 21^st Century in Higher Education. For more on this panel, and on Juilliard’s debut as an IAJE Conference Exhibitor, click here.

The IAJE Conference industry track expanded to more than 30 sessions for 2001. These insightful and often times controversial panels and workshops are geared to members of the jazz recording, journalism, presenting, performing, retail, and radio industry. With sponsorship and support from Jazz Times, BET on Jazz, Jazziz, Down Beat, NARAS, the Jazz Journalists Association, Chamber Music America, and DL Media, the industry track provided multiple opportunities for industry members to interact with jazz educators and musicians. Among the highlights was an open interview with Quincy Jones and a panel session on Using The Latest Technology To Enhance Your Sound moderated by Herbie Hancock.

Additionally, National Public Radio (NPR) produced a full-day radio symposium on Wednesday, January 10, with panels on issues of interest to jazz radio professionals. NPR also constructed a command broadcast booth in the lobby of the New York Hilton Hotel, with daily live feeds to KLON-FM (Long Beach CA) and the conference host station, WBGO-FM (Newark NJ).

Other conference highlights were performances by the BET on Jazz Sisters in Jazz Collegiate All-Stars, Dan Szabo, the winner of the Montreux Jazz Festival Jas Hennessy Piano Competition, and the Clifford Brown/Stan Getz Fellowship Recipients (supported in part by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts). The Brown/Getz Fellowships went to high school students from around the nation: Erica Von Kleist (Hartford CT); Brandon Jamail Lee (Missouri City TX); Frank LoCrasto (Garland TX), Michael Emswiler (Renton WA); James Johnson (Pikesville MD).

“This was the most successful conference to date in terms of scope,” IAJE President Ronald C. McCurdy commented in an interview. “There was something for everybody. Every aspect of community was represented: artists, educators, jazz enthusiasts, jazz journalists, industry people. There were all these different groups from all over the world: the Brussels Jazz Orchestra, the Metropole Orchestra. The fact that we’ve become an international association allows us opportunities that are quite unique. It is a situation where we can convene the European Jazz Festival organization and industry tracks -- a place where KLON, NPR, and Jazz Times can all come together to discuss furthering the music.”

“The most moving moment,” according to McCurdy, “was watching the group from Jerusalem -- Palestinians and Israelis swinging together, creating music, when their parents and grandparents may be at war. “To me that speaks to the power of how moving this music can be.”

Pat Metheny presented the conference keynote speech during the Opening General Session on Thursday, January 11. The focus of Metheny’s speech was the need to encourage experimentation in jazz, presenting a controversial stand against the growing historical movement in jazz.

“In recent years, with the centennial of this music approaching and the beginning of a new century, we have spent a lot of time basking in the glory of the achievements of the masters in this form,” Metheny stated. “Tribute records, films, reissues, reissues of reissues, more tribute records, tribute records in tribute to other tribute records...you name it! There are great things about that…but I feel that to spend too much time doing that can also breed a certain kind of complacency towards one of the major elements that has historically been a primary ingredient in the success, and survival, of this music.”

Metheny articulated his belief that the future health of the profession lies in the cultivation of the new. “As musicians, educators, journalists, industry executives, students, all of us, we all have an exciting opportunity to take jazz to places it has never gone, to turn it into a music that millions of people everywhere (people that don't even know how much they love it yet) will find out what WE all already know: that the nature of this music has the ability to transform people, to enlighten them and enrich them in ways that ONLY this music can.

“But in order for that to happen, we all have to rise to this challenge, and it's a big one: the challenge to recreate and reinvent the music to a new paradigm resonant to THIS era, a new time. It's simply not gonna cut it to just keep looking back, emulating what has already been done with just a slightly different spin on it. We have to get to work to a degree that we haven't seen for a while now on a broad level within the jazz community; we have to get our collective imagination working hard on a vision that is more concerned with what this music can BECOME than what it has already BEEN.”

McCurdy, who is also Director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz at USC, had a different take on the growing interesting in jazz history. “I think it’s important that we integrate history in our teaching,” McCurdy commented. “History addresses the sociopolitical issues that impact the music.” McCurdy believes in what he calls “teaching the ‘why’ in the jazz.” “Why did Coltrane play the way he did? Why did Billie Holiday sing the way she sang? There were cultural forces that motivated them. You can’t separate the social issues, the impact of society from the music.”

Furthermore, McCurdy thinks that efforts such as Ken Burns mammoth Jazz documentary will bring in new listeners interested in new jazz as well as old. “I have a brother who is not a musician, and he had never heard of Ken Burns or Jelly Roll Morton,” McCurdy went on. He views his brother as the kind of audience member for whom Burns made the film. “He didn’t produce the documentary for jazz musicians. He did an excellent job of putting the music in a social context. It is a port of entry for those who know nothing about jazz.” He pointed out that his brother has bought the companion CDs to the documentary, some additional historical recordings, but also recordings of current artists. McCurdy concluded that he thinks that Jazz will inspire others to listen to new music, as well.

The Opening General Session also included the world premiere of the Herb Alpert Jazz Endowment Fund Gil Evans Commission and the ASCAP/IAJE Commissions (honoring Louis Armstrong). The Evans Fellowship recipient for 2000 was Czech pianist/composer/arranger/educator Pavel Wlosok, and his piece Shapes and Structures was performed by Chuck Owen and Jazz Surge. The 2001 Evans Fellowship winner was also named: bassist John Hollenbeck. Hollenbeck’s commissioned work will be premiered at the 2001 IAJE Conference.

The winners of the ASCAP/IAJE Commissions were bass trombonist/composer/arranger/conductor Ed Partyka, in the Emerging Jazz Composer category, for his piece London Calling, and University of South Florida Professor Chuck Owen, in the Established Jazz Composer category, for his piece Red Beans and Ricely Yours.

A 40,000 sq. ft. music industry exposition rounded out the conference with upwards of 300 exhibits representing a diverse mix of companies including festivals, publishers, manufacturers, agencies, schools, and record companies.