April is Jazz Appreciation Month
23 Years and Still Swingin'
April was designated Jazz Appreciation Month in 2001. It started as a dream that became reality thanks to the advocacy of our friend John Haase. I met John during my time with the original Jazz-Artists-In-Schools (JAIS) program (1979-1985). That program was underwritten by the National Endowment for the Arts and many state arts councils including Iowa’s Arts Council under former director Nan Stillians.
In 1980 Marcia and I traveled to Great Falls, Montana for a year-long residency as teaching artists for the Montana Arts Council. Our first site was a middle School where the late John Kohler was the music teacher. John and Marjorie Kohler were also our family support system when we were in Great Falls. Their son Robbie, then an aspiring young bassist and I hit it off immediately forming an informal teacher/student relationship that endures to this day.
Rob, not incidentally, has gone on to be one of the premier educators and bassists in the Western United States. Fun fact: Rob hired ME to teach alongside my hero, the legendary bassist Richard Davis during the Stanford Jazz Festival in 2003. [see photo below]
Robbie and his brother Lee have recently been featured on a project celebrating the music of Chick Corea.
Those are the kinds of teaching/counseling/advising/apprentice/ relationships that endure. The 45 years that have passed since we first set foot in Montana have not dimmed the gratitude for our time with some of the greatest people and the most beautiful parts of our country. All that and Jazz music too….whoo hooo!!
During our Montana residency, Marcia and I taught in small towns like Glendive, we taught at the University in Missoula with former director Lance Boyd, we taught in schools on tribal reservations in Browning and Wolf Point. Our first Winter of 1980, we lived in Arlee on the Flathead Indian reservation .
Jazz doesn’t just take place in big cities. It can happen wherever someone needs to express themselves and puts in the effort to learn the language of Jazz.
Promoting Jazz studies to students and teachers in the United States during those years was a life changing experience. In 2024 it’s unusual for a school NOT to have a jazz studies section in the curriculum.
Today’s wide access to the materials of Jazz studies can be traced back to a vision put forward by Larry Ridley, and A.B. Spellman. Thanks to their efforts Jazz is now recognized as the rigorous, thoughtful and multi-disciplinary artform that it truly is.
Jazz is more than a musical thing. It’s a state of mind, it’s a toolkit, it’s a life raft, it’s a a warm blanket, it’s a gift from the elders who performed spiritual alchemy, turning America’s exploitation and rejection into golden tones of love, resolution and possibility.
That my friends is some heavy stuff.
And with that, let’s begin our JAM adventure. Hang on.
