Lower Elementary | Performance Guide

Learning GuideWalton Arts Center

Jazz Is What You Make It! is a concert experience which identifies jazz as an American phenomena while visiting the various styles and eras of jazz history. Performed by the Fayetteville Jazz Collective, the concert mixes a healthy dose of performance with informative dialogue. Band members demonstrate how jazz has influenced contemporary and popular music while emphasizing the fundamental character of jazz as self-expression, individualism and improvisation. Jazz is presented as a uniquely American, democratic process and connected to the rich legacy of jazz in the Natural State with a tip-of-the-hat to the music of Louis Jordan.

Ideas for Curriculum ConnectionsArkansas Learning Standards: SL.9-10.D, SL.11-12.D; SL.9-10.2, SL.11-12.2Fine Arts Standards Music: P.6.5.3; CRA.SL.1;, R.7.7.1, R.7.8.1; R.7.7.3, R.7.8.3; R.8.6.1, R.8.7.1, R.8.8.1; CN.10.6.1, CN.10.7.1, CN.10.8.1; CN.11.6.1, CN.11.7.1, CN.11.8.1, CN.11.6.2, CN.11.7.2, CN.11.8.2. Music Appreciation: P.4.MA.1; P.5.MA.1; P.6.MA.2; R.7.MA.3; R.9.MA.1.Jazz Band: P.6.JBI.4; R.7.JBI.1 and 2; R.8.JBIII.1History: Era 5.5

HS

Jazz Is What You Make ItPhoto credit: Roland Godefroy

The Art FormJazz is an American art form and an international phenomenon! Born in America, jazz music can be seen as a reflection of the diversity and individualism of this country. Jazz is a product of cultural collaboration and a universal language of tolerance and freedom. At its core are openness to all influences and personal expression through improvisation. Throughout its history, jazz has straddled the worlds of popular music and art music, and it has expanded to a point where its styles are so varied that one may sound completely unrelated to another. Jazz is partly planned and partly spontaneous; that is, as the musicians perform a pre-determined tune, they have the opportunity to create their own interpretations within that tune in response to the other musicians’ performances and whatever else may occur “in the moment” -- this is called improvisation and is the defining element of jazz.

The ProgramJazz Is What You Make It! begins with a contemporary pop song re-arranged as a jazz composition. Audiences immediately recognize the song, and are drawn in to discover that jazz is not a particular tune; rather it is a way to express music through syncopation, harmonization and improvisation. This opens the door to discovering how jazz thrives on change & new influences, and how it is an influence itself, helping to bring innovations in rock and roll, funk, hip hop and rap. The program continues with original compositions plus iconic standards that demonstrate traditional forms of jazz like Swing, New Orleans, Latin, and Fusion. The members of the Fayetteville Jazz Collective ignite the stage with virtuosic solos that demonstrate the art of improvisation as well as tightly arranged ensemble playing.

The essence of jazz as a democratic process is revealed in performance by individuals freely choosing their improvisations, but in a manner which enhances the whole group. Jazz musicians realize the music is better because each player is different – it doesn’t matter what your ethnicity, age or background is; what matters is who you are inside and how you play.

The history of jazz in Arkansas is highlighted with the music of Louis Jordan, a pioneering American musician, songwriter and bandleader who was popular from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as “The King of the Jukebox”, he was popular with both black and white audiences in the later years of the swing era. The MusiciansThe Fayetteville Jazz Collective was founded in 2009 as a professional jazz ensemble comprised entirely of musicians and educators active in and around the Northwest Arkansas area. The FJC seeks to preserve and enhance the jazz tradition through education of young audiences, aspiring musicians, and the general public. The Fayetteville Jazz Collective has been featured around the 4-state region of Northwest Arkansas with performances at the Walton Arts Center with the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, University of Arkansas Commencement Ceremonies, Bentonville Arts Festival, University of Arkansas Summer Band Camp and Arend Art Center with the Arkansas Philharmonic Orchestra.

Jazz Is What You Make It! / Learning Guide

Duke Ellington his band, 1937, Photo Credit: Frank Driggs—Frank Driggs Collection/Hulton Archve/Getty Images

America’s Music

Born in the United States over 100 years ago, Jazz is America’s

music. It is the best music to represent America because:

• Jazz is an example of democracy in action. Each member of the

band has the individual freedom to express their musical ideas.

Along with that freedom comes responsibility to the group. In

other words, individual musicians have the freedom to express

themselves on their instrument as long as they maintain their

responsibility to the other musicians by adhering to the overall

framework and structure of the tune.

• Jazz music is a melting pot and it represents all the cultures and

races that participate.

• Jazz is partly planned and partly spontaneous; that is, as

the musicians perform a pre-determined tune, they have the

opportunity to create their own interpretations within that tune

in response to the other musicians’ performances and whatever

else may occur “in the moment” -- this is called improvisation

and is the defining element of jazz.

• People are constantly improvising. We all improvise daily

in conversation, walking down the street, choosing our

wardrobe and through countless choices we make on the spot.

Improvisation is the key element of jazz.

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Where Did Jazz Come From?

Jazz was born in New Orleans about 100

years ago (early 20th century), but its roots

can be found in the musical traditions of both

Africa and Europe. In fact, some people say

that jazz is a creative blending of traditions

from African and European music.

From 1619 to well into the 1800s, men,

women and children wre brought to the

Americas from Africa as slaves. Labor was

forced upon them, and they were denied

many basic rights. In their new communities,

music played a functional (not artistic) role.

African American, both enslaved and free,

shared music in work songs, spiritual songs,

healing songs, fertility songs, etc. From

African music, jazz got its:

• Rhythm and “feel”

• “Blues” quality

• Tradition of playing an instrument in your

own way, making it an “extension” of the

human voice

Contrary to the basic concept of African

music as functional music, the basic

concept of European music was art and

entertainment. From European music, jazz

got its:

• Harmony - that is, the chords that

accompany the tunes (the chords played

on the piano); jazz harmony is similar to

classical music’s harmony

• Instruments - most of the instruments

used in jazz originated in Europe

(saxophone, trumpet, piano, etc.)

• Musical improvisation comes from both

traditions.

Both origins are essential to jazz. It is

unquestionably art music; however, it

has been and continues to be utilized as

functional music as well (e.g., for dancing,

atmosphere background music, even funeral

music in the 1920s); it has been performed

everywhere from the most prestigious

concert halls (e.g., Carnegie Hall, Lincoln

Center, Los Angeles Music Center, The

John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing

Arts, etc.) to the lowliest street corners and

dancehalls.

What is Jazz?

Herbie Hancock, 2006

1803The land between the Mississippi River and Rocky Mountains, including what would become Arkansas, is sold to the United States.

1830Storytelling and “Arkansas Traveler,” played on fiddle and banjo are entertainments in the early settlements in Arkansas Territory.

1836The US Supreme Court rules “separate but equal facilities” is constitutional in Plessy v. Ferguson.

1899Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag becomes the most successful piano rag for the era. Eugene Staples, known as the King of Rhythm, and his orchestra play hot jazz.

1910A new kind of jazz music started in New Orleans and spread across Arkansas.

1920Touring “territory bands” like the Synco Six of Helena and Brady Bryant’s Salt and Pepper Shakers with Louis Jordan emerged in Arkansas. Their music included the blues, ragtime and boogie-woogie traditions that contributed to the sound of Kansas City Jazz.

1925-1930 Arkansas musicians like Lawrence Leo “Snub” Mosley and Hayes Pillars were among the first black artists to perform jazz on the radio

1936Little Rock, Arkansas hosts the biggest jazz artists touring in the United States and became frequent stops for leading jazz artists. Arkansas celebrates 100 years of statehood.

1942Jazz vocalist, Al Hibbler, who studied at Arkansas School for the Blind, began singing with Duke Ellington’s Band and recording popular jazz records. The widespread use of radio and phonograph records helped spread jazz music in popular culture.

1955Two innovative jazz musicians, Bob Dorough and Louis Thomas Hardin advance the art of jazz through their compositions and performances.

1957Nine African American students struggle to attend Little Rock Central High School. Civil rights struggle gains national attention. Arkansas Gov. Faubus opposes President Eisenhower. Jazz artist Charles Mingus records Fables for Faubus including lyrics like: “Oh Lord, don’t let them shoot us. Oh Lord, don’t let them stab us...”

1960Jazz musicians witness racial prejudice in America and are active in integrating orchestras, and performance venues. Musicians and audiences helped bring cultural and political changes including advancement in civil rights that led to integration in the United States.

1970Jazz artists fuse the improvisational style of jazz with classical music, Latin music, swing, funk and ballad.

1980Robert Ginsburg began producing Shades of Jazz, on KUAF-FM in NW Arkansas.

1990The Arkansas Jazz Heritage Foundation is established.

2015The Jazz Initiative at Walton Arts is created.

Jazz Is What You Make It! / Learning Guide

Photo Credit: Fayetteville Jazz Collective

A Timeline of Arkansas and Jazz History

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With New Orleans, Louisiana, and Kansas

City, Missouri, emerging as the booming

urban epicenters of jazz music and

inevitably spilling this music and culture

across interstate lines, Arkansas began to

see a number of touring “territory bands”

sprout up around the state in the late 1910s

and early 1920s. Territory bands were

dance bands that crisscrossed specific

regions of the United States from the

1920s through the 1960s, disseminating

popular music including swing, jazz, and

dance music, to remote gin mills and

dance halls that were otherwise ignored by

national booking agents. Arkansas’s first

major jazz musician, pianist Alphonso E.

“Phonnie” Trent led one of these bands,

The Alphonso Trent Orchestra, which

became “the most idolized and advanced

band of the Southwest.” Another ground-

breaking Arkansas musician was Louis

Jordan. In 1925, future icon Louis Jordan

began making a name for himself playing

alto saxophone in Brady Bryant’s Salt

and Pepper Shakers out of Brinkley

Arkansas. The mid-to-late 1920s also saw

an emergence of jazz in El Dorado (Union

County), driven by the number of dance

halls popping up in the wake of the city’s

oil boom. There, Jordan played briefly in

Jimmy Pryor’s Imperial Serenaders, one of

a number of El Dorado bands whose short

tenures were a result of the city police’s

crackdown on Prohibition-era nightclubs.

Ultimately, Louis Thomas Jordan—vocalist,

bandleader, and saxophonist—ruled the

charts, stage, screen, and airwaves of

the 1940s and profoundly influenced the

creators of rhythm and blues (R&B), rock n’

roll, and post–World War II blues.

Jazz in the Natural State

Louis Jordan, Photo Credit: William P. Gottlieb

Top 20 Jazz Recordings Everyone Should Hear:

• The Original Dixieland Jazz Band – The Creators of Jazz • Fats Waller – Handful of Keys • Louis Armstrong – The Complete Hot 5 and Hot 7

Recordings • Louis Jordan – Choo Choo Ch’Boogie• Coleman Hawkins – The Essential Sides Remastered • Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker – Town Hall, New York

City, June 22, 1945 • Duke Ellington - The Complete Ellington – Indigos• Thelonious Monk – Genius of Modern Music, Vol. 1• Dinah Washington – First Issue: The Dinah Washington

Story • Wes Montgomery – The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes

Montgomery • Modern Jazz Quartet – Django • Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers – Moanin’ • Horace Silver – Song for My Father • Miles Davis – Kind Of Blue• Ornette Coleman – The Shape of Jazz to Come• Mario Bauza – The Tanga Suite• Dave Brubeck – Time Out• John Coltrane – Giant Steps• Sonny Rollins – Saxophone Colossus• Keith Jarrett – The Köln Concert, 1975• Wynton Marsalis Septet – Live at the Village Vanguard

Jazz Is What You Make It! / Learning Guide

Music has the unique characteristic of communicating emotions to every human being, regardless of language, culture, or nationality. That is why music is found in every culture, is a multi-billion dollar industry and many listeners would agree that they are emotionally affected far more by music than even the most beautifully expressed words. With jazz, because of its improvisational aspect, the musicians are communicating the “emotion of the moment;” that is, the emotion they are feeling while they are performing (remember, when improvising they are deciding what notes to play as they respond to the music of the moment and of the other musicians). • In this way, jazz is different from classical music which

is written down (composed) ahead of time, transcribed and played to express the emotion of the composer.

• In jazz, most of the music heard during a solo is “spontaneously composed” by the musicians themselves and played the way the musicians feel at that given moment.

• The spontaneity heard (or “felt”) in jazz requires the requires the audience to be actively listening to the ever-changing aspects of a given interpretation of a tune.

• A helpful analogy: classical music is to jazz as reading a good book aloud is to having a good conversation; while a printed book never changes, a conversation changes according to the a conversation changes according to the situation, moment or partner.

What Is Improvisation?Every time you have a conversation you are improvising. What you are going to say is not planned ahead of time; it depends on what is discussed during the conversation; what you say, then what your friend says, and so on. Jazz musicians do the same with their instruments, but rather than using words to communicate, they use they use musical instruments and musical conventions; it’s literally a musical conversation.

Improvisation is inventing something on the spur of the moment and in response to a certain situation; in jazz, it is when musicians perform a different interpretation each time they play the same tune, i.e., a tune is never played the exact same way twice; the improvisation becomes its own musical dialogue between band members without any preconceived notion of what the final outcome will be.

Dizzy GillespieTrumpet (1917-1993)

Biography: www.dizzygillespie.com/

and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dizzy_Gillespie

John Birks Gillespie, better known as

“Dizzy,” was born in 1917 in Cheraw, South

Carolina. He began playing piano at the

age of four and took up the trombone and

trumpet at 12. Even though he earned

a music scholarship to North Carolina’s

Laurinburg Institute at the age of 15,

throughout his high school years he was

essentially self-taught.

In the late 1930s Gillespie worked his

way through a succession of big bands,

earning a reputation as a talented performer

and free spirit worth of the nickname,

“Dizzy.”During this period great connections

were made with fellow musicians, including

the great saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker

and the pianist Thelonious Monk. During

their jam sessions at New York Clubs,

Gillespie, Parker and Monk established

an entirely new sound in jazz: bepop. This

new style took the jazz world by storm

and established Gillespie’s international

reputation. Dizzy Gillespie also pioneered

the fusion of Afro-Cuban rhythms with

jazz music in the 1940s, helping to create

another jazz genre of enormous popularity

and importance.

Consider the following questions as you

read the biography of Dizzy Gillespie:

• How did Dizzy Gillespie become

interested in music?

• What influence did he have on other

famous jazz musicians?

• What are Gillespie’s most famous

contributions to Afro-Cuban music?

• Why did he play on a trumpet with a

special, raised bell?

Learning Activity

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When students respond to a performance from the point of view of an actively involved listener in a live, theatrical setting, they understand our world by interpreting what they experience. Students learn through live performances. Questions teachers ask before and after the performance help students discover more. For students, the learning process of seeing and responding prompts future inquiry.

Before the Performance

• Have you heard jazz music?• Can you think of the name of a jazz musician?• Compare a jazz song to storytelling. How are they alike?• Research two important artists in jazz history (Great

examples on page 3) How did they contribute to the style of music we call jazz?

• Do you think people feel better when they express themselves in music?

• What are instruments that make the sound of jazz?

Help your students listen to, analyze, describe and evaluate the performance, Jazz Is What You Make It! Use some of the questions on this page to guide your students. The questions help students develop and expand their responses. Practicing the reflective process helps students be more specific in describing what they experience.

Describe the performance of one song in as much detail as possible.

• What instruments were used?• Describe the quality of voice.• Describe the rhythm.• Performances are made of several elements including:

what you see, what you hear and what you feel. How do the genres of music, storytelling and the performing arts work together?

• Performances share visual aural and emotional experiences.

• What did you see, hear and feel?

Interpret the Work

• Synthesize your thoughts. How does everything you

notice fit together to make meaning?

• Using your descriptions and analysis, develop your

interpretation of a song or the performance.

• What ideas might the artist have tried to convey?

• What issue was the artist concerned with?

• Can you connect your own experience with any

moments in the song?

• Does the song mean something to you personally?

• What other meanings might it have?

• Did the artist express a universal feeling or idea?

Analyze Artist Choices

• Notice the elements that made the performance.

• How did the musicians in the Fayetteville Jazz

Collective relate to each other?

• What choices did the artist make that you noticed?

• How did the musical elements of tempo, pitch, and

dynamics convey mood?

• What instruments did you notice? How did the choice

of instruments shape the musical idea?

• When and how did the artist choose to use his voice

to convey the story or feeling?

• Did text relate to the music?

Performances are made of several elements

including what you see, what you hear and what you

feel. How do the genres of music, storytelling and the

performing arts work together?

Performances share visual and emotional

experiences. What did you see, hear and feel?

Focus Questions

Name of Performance/ Performance Guide

Volume 14 Number 3

Colgate Classroom Series performances

help students meet Arkansas Learning

Standards.

Learn more at:www.waltonartscenter.org

Walton Arts Center

Learning & Engagement

Laura Goodwin, Vice President

Dr. Patricia Relph, Arts Learning Specialist

Mallory Barker, School Services Specialist

Meghan Foehl, Engagement Coordinator

Sallie Zazal, Learning Coordinator

For more information about Jazz at Walton

Arts Center:

Robert Ginsburg, Jazz Curator

479.571.2751

rginsburg@waltonartscenter.org

Learn More Online

• History of Jazz In Arkansas

www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=5037

• The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz: jazz lesson plans and jazz resources

www.jazzinamerica.org/Home

• Jazz At Lincoln Center

www.jazz.org/

As a part of Lincoln Center’s page, view live webcasts, explore their video library and

browse image galleries

www.jazz.org/media/

• Connect to the Northwest Arkansas Jazz Society whose mission is to present,

preserve, promote, and celebrate the great American art form known as jazz through

education, concert presentation and artist promotion.

www.digjazz.com

• Arkansas Jazz Heritage Foundation: dedicated to educating the general public

about the historical significance of jazz in Arkansas

www.arjazz.org/

Duke Ellington and his band

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Learning & Engagement

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Education Grantors:Arkansas Arts CouncilBank of AmericaBaum Charitable FoundationThe John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing ArtsMurphy FoundationWalmart FoundationThe Walton Family FoundationWindgate Charitable Foundation

Walton Arts Center 2016/17 Learning programming is generously supported by these funders, sponsors and benefactors:

Education Partners:Crystal Bridges Museum of American ArtNorthwest Arkansas Education Service Cooperative UA Center for Children & Youth

Additional support for arts education programs comes from Candace and David Starling and all Friends of Walton Arts Center.

Become a Friend!Close to 800 Friends of Walton Arts Center support learning programming with their annual support. Become a Friend today and help Walton Arts Center continue to serve 45,000 students over the next year.

For more information on the Friends of Walton Arts Center program, please call 479.571.2759 or visit www.waltonartscenter.org/support

Special Program Support for Jazz Is What You Make It!:Northwest Arkansas Jazz Society