[Dixielandjazz] Youth Orchestra -- Youth Trad Jazz Festival

Tue Mar 8 17:27:00 PST 2005

Steve Barbone writes:

 > For those who believe that Youth Bands are not worth the price of
admission,
> and so they must play for free in order to be heard, note what our
> classical
> musician friends are doing at CARNEGIE HALL.
>
> Not only performing, but commissioning works from YOUNG composers.
>
> Is it any wonder that OKOM languishes when we ourselves do not support the
> mechanism for helping it to grow? (E.G. paying gigs for youth bands)
>
> THIS IS A MUST READ FOR ALL OF YOU "EDUCATORS" OUT THERE.

Steve, What makes you think that the New York Youth Symphony, or let's say,
the individual musicians of the New York Youth Symphony are paid to perform?

 Obviously you are still referring to the Youth Trad Jazz Festival that the
Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society and the Jazz studies at CSUS are
sponsoring for Feb 11, 2006.

See http://www.sacjazz.org

Your negative response to this groundbreaking festival, is astounding to me.
After reading about the plans for the Youth Trad Jazz Festival, you say,
regarding OKOM (Our kind of music), "we ourselves do not support the
mechanism for helping it to grow."  Unbelievable!

As with other academic, adjudicated music festivals with judges and
clinicians, this youth trad jazz festival is part of a learning process for
young musicians.  It is also hoped that it will encourage school music
teachers to
teach their young music students more about early jazz and of course for
school music departments to add the study of early jazz to their 
curriculums.

It is expected that most of the bands that will be competing in the
festival will be from schools.  And most of the musicians will not be of
professional quality.  This is part of a learning process for the young
musicians.

Think about it in this way.  Kids study math in school.  They do not get
paid to do so.  They may someday grow up to be a mathematician, but for now, 
they are learning.

 They go on field trips.  They do not get paid to do these
trips.

They participate in sports.  Can you imagine a high-school football
player getting paid to play football?

They belong to the Chess club & compete in tournaments.  Do they get paid
for this?

They belong to the swimming team, practice every day, compete in swimming
meets and, if they get good enough, maybe even go to the Olympics.  Do they
get paid to do this?  No.  Sure, sometimes they get help through
sponsorships.

The Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society give scholarships to our youth jazz
camp, award scholarships for music lessons and sponsor a youth traditional
jazz band.  Many other Jazz Societies do the same.

We find that while every young musician who gets music lesson scholarships,
who attends our jazz camp & who plays in the STJS youth jazz band, TNT (The
New Traditionalists), is not going to become a professional musician.
However, they will certainly be made more aware that music was not invented
by the Beatles.

We have 90 to 100 musicians who attend our youth jazz camp every
year.  We do not turn out 90 to 100 professional musicians.  But the kids
have a wonderful time, play with and learn from some of the top OKOM
musicians in the country and go away with an appreciation for our kind of
jazz.

You continually sight Jonathan as being a young musician whom you pay to
play with your band.
That is all well and good.  However, there are very few Jonathans around.
While Jonathan is good, for his age, he has a long way to go.  If he falls
into the trap of believing his own press, and does not continue to practice
and get better, he will someday be a 30 year old fiddle player that is still
playing like a 9 year old prodigy.  This has happened so many times.  Let's
hope it does not happen to him.

BTW- Jonathan is tentatively scheduled to appear at the Sacramento
Traditional Jazz Society in 2006.

One of the ways of raising enough money to put this Youth Trad Jazz Festival
on is to sell business size ads in the program for $50.  I am sure that
larger ads may be purchased.

To buy an ad:

Send your business card sized ad (3 1/2" x 2" camera ready art) and $50 
check payable to Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society, to:

Edd Burhans
Creative T's and Things
90 Arden Way
Sacramento, CA 95815

Questions may be directed to him at (916) 927-8858 or
ctees at pacbell.net

--Bob Ringwald
Placerville, CA USA

> ---------

> March 8, 2005 MUSIC REVIEW | NEW YORK YOUTH SYMPHONY - NY TIMES
>
> The Passion of a Romantic Strikes a ChorBy JEREMY EICHLER
>
> With all those broadly winged melodies that are so much fun to play, and
> the
> intense emotions that resonate with the highs and lows of adolescent life,
> the symphonies and concertos of Tchaikovsky can seem made-to-order for the
> young classical musician. They certainly did on Sunday afternoon, when the
> New York Youth Symphony passionately devoted itself to a mostly
> Tchaikovsky
> program for the second Carnegie Hall concert of its 42nd season.
>
> But before the Russian fireworks began, the orchestra, made up of 108
> musicians from the metropolitan New York area, performed something fairly
> common for this ensemble but very rare for most youth symphonies: a world
> premiere. Through its essential First Music series, the orchestra has
> commissioned works from 62 young composers. It's hard to imagine a better
> way to support new voices while at the same time building contemporary
> music
> into the regular diet of emerging musicians. In this case, the composer
> was
> Thomas Osborne, whose "Nostalgia of the Infinite," after the painting by
> Giorgio de Chirico, was a handsome study in musical contrasts, an evolving
> orchestral dialogue between steely, brass-heavy gestures and a more lush
> and
> pliable response from the strings.
>
> It was followed by Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 with Antonio
> Pompa-Baldi, a young professional making his Carnegie Hall debut. Mr.
> Pompa-Baldi and the orchestra, under its music director, Paul Haas, did
> not
> always agree on tempo and pacing, but this did not prevent the soloist
> from
> displaying a fluid yet hard-edged technique and a fiery Romantic
> temperament. Most striking was the sheer amount of sound he produced in
> the
> outer movements with chords that banged out like pistol shots over the
> orchestra. With time, he may develop finesse in equal measure.
>
> The concert concluded with Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony, cloaked in
> mystery
> where appropriate and exultant on the right occasions. Both the symphony
> and
> especially the concerto are repertory war horses, and yet the great thing
> about youth orchestra concerts is that most of these players are
> encountering this music for the first time. Those initial meetings are
> precious, for they happen only once, and judging by the applause between
> movements and the number of young people in the audience, you can bet they
> were occurring on both sides of the footlights.
>
>
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