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From: JAZZ PROMO SERVICES
Press Contact: JIM EIGO, [email protected]
The Jazz Museum in Harlem
104 East 126th Street
New York, NY 10035
212 348-8300
www.jazzmuseuminharlem.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 1/4/05
Jazz Museum in Harlem Education Initiative Presents
Celebration !
Featuring The Joe Wilder Quartet and the Christian McBride/Loren Schoenberg Duo
a free event that you should not miss.
Saturday, January 14, 2006, 10am-2pm at the Frederick Douglass Academy (located at 2581 Seventh Avenue and 149th Street. (The 148th Street stop of the #3 train lets out right next to the school. Parking is available.)
New York, NY--The Jazz Museum in Harlem invites lovers of jazz and education to the culminating event of its Harlem Speaks Education Initiative, an 8-week program in jazz history sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
Over 40 juniors and seniors of the Frederick Douglass Academy participated in the program, learning about jazz culture as it relates to American history via interviews with senior artists whose lives and careers took jazz and history beyond just textbooks, recordings and video clips. Octogenarian trumpet great Joe Wilder, and Jacquie “Tajah" Murdock, Apollo Theater dancer in the 40s and a superb dance historian, engaged the youth during four of the eight sessions, bringing history alive.
The Saturday, January 14, 2006 event will run from 10am-2pm, and features:
10am-10:30am: Student and teacher performances
10:30am-11:45am: Panel discussion with Tajah Murdock, Joe Wilder, band leader and multi-instrumentalist Johnny Colon, and Jean Bach, filmmaker of A Great Day in Harlem.
11:45am-1:00pm: Film--A Great Day in Harlem, an Oscar-nominated documentary about the historic 1958 Esquire magazine photo of jazz musicians taken on the steps of a Harlem brownstone.
1pm-2pm: Musical performance by the Joe Wilder Quartet, with dancing by Tajah Murdock, plus the Christian McBride/Loren Schoenberg Duo
The Harlem Speaks Education Initiative
In this course students learn about the vibrancy of jazz and the magnitude of the achievements of its practitioners. Through the method of Oral Histories students gather and preserve historical information through recorded interviews with the participants. Students make connections by gaining a larger understanding of the role of music and musicians by learning about the music of famous jazz musicians, different styles of jazz and by tracing the history by means of interviewing honorees, musicians and others connected to jazz, through independent and group research, deepening their historical and cultural understanding of music.
The course is taught by Greg Thomas, Editor-in-Chief of Harlem World magazine, a long-time jazz journalist (i.e., All About Jazz--NY) and co-producer of Harlem Speaks.
Harlem Speaks
The Jazz Museum in Harlem's Jazz Museum in Harlem's “Harlem Speaks" series is a bi-weekly discussion centered on past and present musical greats. Executive Director Loren Schoenberg launched the series to honor persons keeping the flame of jazz alive in Harlem. “Jazz lives and breathes in Harlem today, not just in the gloried past of yesterday," says Schoenberg. “There are musicians, writers, dancers, promoters, entrepreneurs, and philanthropists, among others, whose efforts insure that this great music perseveres. We at the Jazz Museum in Harlem salute these individuals, and invite the jazz community to share in our celebration of their contributions to jazz in Harlem."
The Harlem Speaks series is co-produced by Loren Schoenberg, Co- Executive Director Christian McBride and Greg Thomas Associates. Each event takes place at the offices of the Jazz Museum in Harlem, located at 104 East 126th Street, between Park and Lexington Avenues, from 6:30pm-8:00pm twice a month on Thursdays.
The Harlem Speaks Education Initiative culminating event will occur at the Frederick Douglass Academy, located at 2581 Seventh Avenue and 149th Street. (The 148th Street stop of the #3 train lets out right next to the school. Parking is available.)
Frederick Douglass Academy Every year In June, The Frederick Douglass Academy ("FDA") celebrates the fulfillment of a dream--that of our children graduating from high school and beginning their undergraduate studies. The goal of FDA is to provide a rich, vigorous and challenging academic curriculum that will prepare our students to enter the college of their choice. College preparation begins in the 6th grade. The school provides a wide variety of clubs and teams to supplement the roster of academic courses that are offered. These activities may take place before or after school and/or on Saturdays, as is the case for the Harlem Speaks Education Initiative.
The values and beliefs that influenced Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. when he studied at Morehouse College are exactly the same ones that each Frederick Douglass scholar is expected to exemplify. Every student is expected to learn The Frederick Douglass Student Creed (based on the Morehouse Student Creed) and the 12 Non-Negotiables, also referred to as Academy Rules. Four hours of homework is expected from our students each day. As funding permits, a summer enrichment program is scheduled and entering students are required to attend three weeks for the 6th and 7th grades and six weeks for the 9th grade.
Gilder Lehrman Institute Founded in 1994, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History promotes the study and love of American history. Increasingly national and international in scope, the Institute's initiatives target audiences ranging from students to scholars to the general public. The Institute creates history-centered schools and academic research centers; organizes seminars and enrichment programs for educators; produces print and electronic publications and traveling exhibitions; and sponsors lectures by eminent historians. The Institute funds awards including the Lincoln and Frederick Douglass Book Prizes and offers fellowships for scholars to work in the Gilder Lehrman Collection and other archives.
For more information contact All About Jazz.
