Pioneering Jazz Education
Jazz education became formalized during the period after
World War II. After the introduction of the GI Bill, returning servicemen wishing
to advance their knowledge of jazz began to take courses in dance band music,
and in the history of jazz, in institutions with jazz curricula. Out of these
institutions came the pioneer jazz educators, and they brought their experience
to colleges throughout the United States during the 1950s (Hansson, Interview of Dan Morgenstern, January 2004).
The music publishing industry played a role in promoting school jazz,
sponsoring clinicians, and helping to underwrite many of the school stage band
festivals. Summer Jazz Camps brought together experienced faculties of clinicians. Important developments of the 1960s were firstly the inclusion of 'jazz' at a Music
Educators National Conference, the Yale Seminar, and the Tanglewood Symposium,
and secondly the founding of the National Association of Jazz Educators (Hennessey, 1995: 34).
The origins of jazz relied on oral and aural transference for the
survival of the art, and musicians learned through listening to recordings,
through on-stage performance settings, and through rote memorization. Jam sessions
acted as one of the earliest forms of organized jazz education, and provided
an outlet for musicians to gather in a creative setting. Jam sessions were
also a valuable training ground for younger players, since at that time there were no other
opportunities available for formal instruction in jazz (Hennessy, 1995: 21). Marian
McPartland herself had no formal tuition in jazz, and she acquired and assimilated
jazz knowledge and skills through listening to records and broadcasts, and through
on-stage interaction with other musicians.
In a recent interview, Marian McPartland recalled the beginnings
of her career as a jazz educator. In 1956, Will Moyle, a disk jockey on station
WVET in Rochester, NY, came to a Marian McPartland Trio concert and asked
if the trio would play an afternoon concert at his son's school. With some misgivings, the trio turned up and played some jazz standard tunes for the youngsters. Even though the audience applauded, when Marian asked them what they would like to hear they called out 'You Ain't Nothing But A Hound Dog'. Marian realized children of that age knew nothing about jazz.
So that really started
me on a crusade of going to schools and playing jazz and trying to get them
interested. I did that for a long time with no attempt to get paid. I would
just offer my services in any town I was in by asking a teacher, 'Would you
like to have us come and play in your school?' 'Oh, yes, we would love it.'
And we'd go and play a concert (Enstice and Stockhouse, 2004: 242).
Marian had been dubious about capturing the audience because at
the time the trio were playing tunes that would be unknown to schoolchildren. However, not only did the kids sit still for jazz, but every tune was received
with tumultuous applause. Marian noticed that some of the teachers ranged around
the walls of the room as if expecting to quell a riot, but they relaxed when
they saw that their charges were spellbound and fascinated with the double bass
and drum solos. After the concert, they crowded around the bandstand to watch
drummer Joe Morello demonstrate his drum techniques.
Encouraged by this success,
Marian McPartland wrote a feature article 'Jazz Goes To Grade School' - which
appeared in DownBeat on September 28, 1961, and was published again
in July 1994 (McPartland, 1994: 70). She recalled that when three hundred students cried out for
Elvis Presley's latest hit, she decided to do something to broaden their knowledge
of jazz music. This spontaneous invitation was the catalyst for her dedication
to playing in schools, determined as she was to introduce jazz into children's
musical minds:
Why should they wait until they are in college before they get
to hear Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Duke Ellington, Oscar Peterson and other
jazz greats? Why not now? (I would love to see Dizzy Gillespie handle these
kids) (McPartland, 1961: 70).
This single experience led Marian to develop her individual
approach to education in schools, based on her observation that young children
could relate to jazz standards such as 'St. Louis Blues' and 'Cherokee', and
could clap hands on beats 2 and 4. The program that day had included George Shearing's
'Lullaby Of Birdland', variations on the folk tune 'Greensleeves', and an extended
version of the nursery rhyme 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' with the children
responding to the music and eager to participate.
Marian McPartland became convinced that
children can be led much further musically than many adults realize. That day
in Rochester, she demonstrated that jazz is the ideal vehicle for
children to develop the full range of creativity open to them. She realized
that, even at a tender age, children can be introduced to jazz as part of their
musical education. It was evident to her that even five-year-olds in kindergarten
would relate to the rhythms of jazz:
I am sure that all over the country, in the elementary schools
and in the high schools, there is a great deal of talent waiting to be nurtured.
Most of the music teachers I have met in various parts of the country are warm,
interested, and receptive to jazz, and many of them, like William Fields in
Fort Lauderdale, include jazz instruction as part of their pupils' musical education.
To me, this is significant (McPartland, 1961: 70).
In the mid-1950s, when the Marian McPartland Trio was invited
to entertain the students at Rochester, many musicians were becoming involved
in the promotion of jazz education in schools. Having been ten years in the
United States, Marian McPartland was aware of studies in dance band music (the
word 'jazz' was not acceptable in academic institutions) at colleges like the
North Texas State College, Westlake in California, Miami State University, and
Berklee College of Music in Boston:
Since the 1950s, stage bands have been growing in popularity, due
to the pioneer work of men like Gene Hall. In 1960, Stan Kenton began his now-famous
clinics and workshops, and it was about this time that I met Clem De Rosa, the
man who has been instrumental in involving me so deeply in school activities
(McPartland, 1973: 17).
Around the time Marian McPartland moved to New York in the 1950s, Marshall Stearns founded the Lenox School of Jazz so that he could launch the first summer jazz seminars. Then in 1952, the first nationwide stage band competition was sponsored by Metronome Magazine, which further fostered the jazz style and encouraged jazz musicians of all ages. Other developments at the time
included jazz study publications, such as 88 Keys To Fame by Sharon Pease. Pease had previously published articles on improvisation and jazz piano stylistic analyses
in DownBeat Magazine, founded in 1934. Jazz was becoming more accessible and
the first four published school stage band charts appeared in 1954 - 'Little
Brown Jug', 'Tuxedo Junction', 'Brown Jump' and 'The Preacher', arranged and
published by Art Dedrick of Kendor Music (Hennessey, 1995: 29).
The National Stage
Band Camps, organized in 1959 by Ken Norris on the campus of Indiana University,
provided further evidence of the strong interest in jazz at a school level,
and the Notre Dame Intercollegiate Jazz Festival, also organized in 1959 and
sponsored by DownBeat, became the standard by which other festivals
were measured. College festivals and summer camps created a demand for educators
who were college graduates with jazz experience. All of these initiatives contributed to jazz education's
accelerated rate of growth. Further, 'in conjunction with Gene Hall, Matt Betton,
and prominent band leader Stan Kenton, Norris developed the idea of summer stage
band camps to fill the void in school curricula' (Hennessy, 1995: 31).
Following the success of the Rochester concert, Marian McPartland
embarked on a crusade to bring jazz into schools, and to fill that void in school
curricula that ignored jazz music. It appalled her to think of kids growing
up without hearing the music of Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong or Count Basie,
and she resolved to fill this lack in their lives by playing for them, and involving
them in jazz as she played it (Davis, 1975).
At the time, the Marian McPartland Trio was
alternating between dates on the road and a long engagement at the Hickory House
in New York. During her tours, Marian often made a habit of seeking out education
departments of various schools to offer to play a concert for students, so determined
was she to bring her brand of jazz into schools. For an article in The New
York Times, she wrote:
I tried to get someone interested in letting us play in the New
York schools - to no avail - but we played in Detroit at Freeman Elementary
School, and in Chicago we played to 2,000 kids in two concerts at Dunbar High
School. We went to grade schools in Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and Columbus, Ohio. We were never at a loss for a school to play in (McPartland, 1973: 17).
When teachers heard that the Marian McPartland Trio would
go to a school and give a free concert, invitations came by the dozen, even
though some educators viewed this activity with apprehension as the word 'jazz'
still had dubious connotations (McPartland, 1973: 17). A Yale Seminar
on Music Education in 1963 recommended using professional musicians for master
classes and clinics, and just as importantly recommended that music be included in curricula
from kindergarten through to twelfth grade. The Yale Seminar also identified two areas of concern - music materials and musical performance (Hennessey, 1995: 35).
Live musical
performance involving students was the foundation of Marian McPartland's philosophy
of education:
It seemed unlikely that they would ever get to watch Louis Armstrong
in person, or Earl Hines and other great players. I decided then that, in my
own way, with my own group, I would try as far as possible to fill this lack
in their lives - I would play for them my versions of some of the fine music
I learned in my career (McPartland, 1973: 17).
Around 1960, Marian McPartland was invited by music educator
Clem De Rosa, then band director of Walt Whitman High School in Huntington,
Long Island, to talk to the students and sit in with their band. Clem De Rosa
was a drummer who had worked in clubs with Charlie Mingus and other big name musicians
before he became an educator. Through him, Marian McPartland became involved
in another far-reaching program in 1966 when the program PACE (Performing Arts
Curriculum Enrichment) was introduced into public schools in Huntington, Long
Island.
Clem De Rosa, by that time director of Cold Spring Harbor High School,
put Marian McPartland's name forward again to introduce live jazz into the program.
Marian had played regular concerts with De Rosa's High School Band in Heckscher
Park, and regarded this new program as a challenge:
It was an ambitious program, with Julie Harris reading the poems
of Emily Dickenson, a dance team, a ballet, and my group representing jazz.
I had a good quartet, with Ray Copeland on trumpet, Jim Kappes on drums, Linc
Milliman on bass, and that was the first educational program of that kind that
I had ever participated in (Clark, 1986: 17).
Marian McPartland and her quartet did everything from concerts
in the school auditorium to classroom discussions, and sit-in sessions with
the school jazz groups and concert bands (McPartland, 1969). It was through
the day-to-day assembly concerts with her four-piece group that Marian McPartland
began to wish for a closer communication with the students. The quartet played
three or four 40-minute concerts a day, and another day students might see a
ballet or watch a performance of a play. As an experiment, one school allowed
students to choose whether they wanted to attend the third concert by the trio,
and 95 per cent of the children chose to go to the concert because they knew
they were going to enjoy it. There were benefits for Marian McPartland and the trio too:
As for my own reactions, I never realized when I started that I
would become so involved in being a part of the average school day. It has
opened up a whole new spectrum of ideas for me and my group and given us the
conviction that jazz can and does interest the teenager if properly presented
to them. I believe we sometimes underestimate the musical intelligence of children
(McPartland, 1968: 48A).
The PACE program, utilizing musicians, actors, singers and
dancers as artists-in-residence, has demonstrated since its inception that it
can help children to develop the full range of creativity open to them.
Marian McPartland then decided that while playing assembly concerts was enjoyable,
she wanted to interact with small groups of students, and have real involvement
with students as individuals, not in a large group:
One day after one of these assemblies, I was asked to visit a classroom
where a typing class was in progress. The teacher asked me if I could in some
way relate music to typing. A small upright piano was brought in for me, and
I asked the students to type some letters of the alphabet. As they did, I improvised
a blues with a strong bass line and played along with them as they typed. It
was the perfect way to show the importance of keeping a steady rhythmic flow
while typing. This one experience set me thinking about all kinds of other
creative ideas to try in classrooms (McPartland, 1973: 17).
The following year, at Marian McPartland's insistence, the
PACE program was set up so that the trio worked only in classrooms. Teachers
would volunteer ideas, and the trio would work with them and improvise on themes
in English, language, art, history and science classes:
Many of these teachers gave us ideas of what they wanted to do
in their classes, and it was a challenge to invent the specific musical idea
required on the spur of the moment. Through these teachers some ideas got started:
playing a blues behind the reading of a Langston Hughes poem; improvising tunes
to stress the importance of rhythm in a typing class; or demonstrating with
music the meaning of such words as 'introvert' or 'extrovert' (McPartland,
1968: 48A).
The trio stimulated learning and creativity with the three players tuning into, and experimenting with, themes and ideas.
'With bass, drums, and piano we could create colors, rhythms, splashes of sound
- there are limitless possibilities, and we saw the sudden surge of added interest
and creativity on the part of the students' (McPartland, 1973: 17).
When
teachers went along with experimental ideas, Marian found it was like having
another musician improvising with the group. 'Everyone has to be flexible,
change ideas at a moment's notice, and be able to adapt quickly to a new turn
of events. I think the spontaneity of these programs made them successful'
(McPartland, 1973: 17)
Marian McPartland asked the following questions of her PACE program - Can jazz be taught? Do the students listen? Does the music have any lasting
effect on them? Can involvement with music help grades? Can we afford to bring
the arts into school on a full-time basis? Can we afford not to? (McPartland, 1968: 48A).
In 1968, Marian McPartland was scheduled for school dates
on Long Island, after closing at the Top Of The Gate jazz room on October 13. After those
concerts, she was to start a new series with the Orchestra Da Camera from Hostra,
playing the same schools again, but this time playing a symphonic arrangement
of 'Eleanor Rigby'. She wrote, 'I'm very excited about this project, it is something
quite different for me' (McPartland, Letter to John S. Wilson, 1968).
In 1969, during Marian
McPartland's residency at The Downbeat club, she put on a concert for teenagers:
We had about a hundred and fifty of them, and two bands, one from
Candlewood School and one from Cold Spring Harbour (conducted by Clem De Rosa),
played between our sets. Some of the kids sat in with us too. Jimmy Nottingham
came over from his rehearsal with The Ed Sullivan Show to sit in, and ABC-TV
covered the whole thing. I and some of the kids were interviewed, and both
bands played, and were seen on the six-o'clock and seven-o'clock news! We may
have started something as far as getting club-owners to realize that there are
many young people around who want to hear jazz. The manager of the club was
quite flabbergasted, and now he wants to open the club on a Sunday afternoon
and run a jazz concert using groups like mine and the High School Bands too.
I was just thrilled with the response to what was just a little idea I had two
weeks ago! Five schools had students there. Besides the two I mentioned from
Long Island, there were people from I.S. 293 in Manhattan, Franklin School,
Manhattan Vocational and Technical School, and the Church of the Transfiguration
(McPartland, Letter to John S. Wilson, 1969).
In 1983, Marian McPartland was asked how she presented jazz
on the piano to young children. What's the most effective level to reach them
on? Harmonic? Rhythmic? Melodic?:
It's a rhythmic thing, definitely. I'll start with something they
know. I've got my preteen repertoire, my kindergarten repertoire, and so on.
One of the great tunes I'm thankful for is [Scott Joplin's] 'The Entertainer'
because you can do a million things with it, a thumbnail sketch of the history
of jazz. If I play a tune and tell them to listen for the way it's different
the second time, it gives them an inkling of what improvisation is. Children
never know the meaning of 'improvise', not even the older kids. Sometimes I
describe it as 'being creative with what you know' or 'doing your own thing,'
though I always come back to 'improvise', trying to get the word across to them
as something only you can do with a tune (Lyons, 1983: 174).
Obviously Marian McPartland's innovative program played a
pioneering and pivotal role in combining the arts and jazz in schools. Following
the 1967 Tanglewood Symposium with the theme of Music In American Society,
there was a call for music to be placed at the core of the curriculum, yet
the word 'jazz' was still not mentioned:
Music of all periods, styles, forms, and cultures belongs in the
curriculum. The musical repertory should be expanded to involve music of our
time in its rich variety, including currently popular teenage music and avant-garde
music, American folk music, and the music of other cultures (Hennessy, 1995: 37).
In 1969, Marian McPartland, described as 'womankind's gift
to the jazz piano', was engaged to teach improvisation and composition to University
of Utah Department of Music jazz majors, in a program coordinated by Dr. William
L. Fowler. She was quoted in The Salt Lake Tribune as saying:
Jazz education as we know it today is only four or five years old,
beginning at the Berklee School of Music in Boston and at North Texas State
University. Now it's catching on by leaps and bounds - the kids are eager and
they want to get involved. And there are more girls in jazz now too. You can't
teach a person to be a jazz musician, but you can make him realize his own potential
(Raine, 1969: E2).
Although jazz education was in its infancy, jazz itself was constantly in a state of flux. Awareness of current trends in music was crucial to getting students involved, Marian McPartland believed. In tune with musical developments of the 1960s, she acknowledged the strong influence of the rock movement on jazz.
'Jazz is like a watercolour - it just keeps on evolving, and now it's blending
with rock and the sound is very good' (Raine, 1969: E2). She regarded vibraphone player
Gary Burton, trumpeter Miles Davis, saxophonist Cannonball Adderley and the
group Blood Sweat and Tears as being instigators of that particular
blending of styles.
In 1961, as Marian McPartland was about to embark on her crusade
to bring jazz into the classroom through combining musical experimentation with
class subjects, she sent out a plea:
Now let the educators, music teachers, and parents of children
start thinking of the possibility of presenting jazz groups and jazz history
as a part of the regular school curriculum. Educating the children through
radio and TV is a lost cause; it has done perhaps irreparable harm to their
sense of taste and discrimination in music. To give them a jazz education might
serve to inoculate them against the rock & roll germ.Why cannot their education
in jazz start right along with the three R's, adding a fourth - rhythm? (McPartland, 1961, Reprinted 1994: 70).
At the end of the decade, Marian McPartland wrote that jazz
education in schools was comparatively new and more and more musicians were
becoming involved in it:
Billy Taylor and his group are among the most active; Benny Powell,
Joe Newman, Chris White, and others are deeply committed to this and other projects,
but all with the same end in view - to bring jazz to children. There are so
many ways possible in which music can become a part of the school curriculum
(McPartland, 1969).
Marian McPartland was a member of judging panels at du Hereut
Collegiate Festivals with musicians Ernie Wilkins, Clark Terry, Thad Jones and
Bob Share, and was impressed by the high standard of playing, precision, blend,
fine sense of rhythm, good intonation and imagination displayed by college jazz
musicians and soloists of great promise, and likewise at Quinnipiac Festival.
She singled out as outstanding players pianist Sonia Frank, composer and pianist Bill Dobbins, and
Richard Alfonso, a flugel horn player with a sound of great power and brilliance.
She believed that personal contact with musicians was beneficial
and crucial to a student's development:
There are a few Junior High Schools that have used musicians as
artists-in-residence and I hope more musicians will get interested in these
programs, and take time out from their regular schedule to participate in them.
There is a great need to give not only a knowledge of jazz to children, but
to let them see and talk to musicians and get to know them as individuals.
What a tragedy that youngsters will now never be able to hear Coleman Hawkins
in person (McPartland, 1969).
The Panel on Education Research and Development, appointed
by President Kennedy, resulted in the official report from the Yale Seminar
in 1964 recommending the use of professional groups and composers-in-residence
in schools. The Marian McPartland Trio played the role of such a group, zealous
about overturning the failure of previous music education programs to develop
creativity in music learning. This element, utilizing professional musicians,
became an important aspect of jazz education in the 1960s (Hennessey, 1995: 35-36).
Marian McPartland wrote about her educational pursuits as follows:
I really believe more and more educational jazz dates will be in
the offing, and that it is a very important part of our musical lives, to go
out and do as many of these dates as we can.I want to start getting into the
class rooms in New York like I did on Long Island. It's fascinating, the things
you can dream up to get a point across' (McPartland, Letter to John S. Wilson, n.d.).
References
Hansson, C. (2004) Interview of Dan Morgenstern, Director, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey, January 28
Hennessey, P. D. (1995) 'Jazz Education In The Four-Year Institution: A Comparative Study of Selected Jazz Curricula,' Unpublished MA (Music) Dissertation, University of Hawaii
McPartland, M. (1961) 'Jazz Goes
To Grade School', DownBeat, September 28 (Reprinted in DownBeat, July 1994, p.70)
Enstice, W. and Stockhouse, J.
(2004) 'Interview With Marian McPartland', in Jazzwomen: Conversations With Twenty-One Musicians, Bloomington
and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pp. 230-251
McPartland, M. (1973) 'I Was Indignant
That Rock Reigned Supreme', The New York Times, September 23, pp. 17, 29
Davis, C. (1975) 'Marian McPartland Jazzes Up Clubs And Classrooms Too', People Magazine, January 13, pp. 66-67
Clark, A. (1986) 'Marian McPartland
Interview', Jazz Educators Journal, vol. 18, no. 4, April/May, pp. 16-18, 70
McPartland, M. (1968) 'This Jazz
Course Is One For The Books', Newsday, November 29, p. 48A
McPartland, M. (1968) Letter to John
S. Wilson, October 1
McPartland, M. (1969) Letter to John
S. Wilson, November 10
Lyons, L. (1983) The Great
Jazz Pianists, New York: Da Capo Press Inc
Raine, G. (1969) 'Meet Marian
McPartland: Lady With All The Rhythm', The Salt Lake Tribune, December 7, pp. E1, E2
McPartland, M. (1969) 'Music Is
My Life', International Musician, September, pp. 6-8
McPartland, M. Letter to John S. Wilson, n.d.
