Carson City Jazz Band students during Monday’s Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz Peer-to-Peer Jazz Education Program at the Carson City Community Center.
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The Carson City School District was one of eight school districts nationwide to be selected for the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz Peer-to-Peer Jazz Education Program, according to a news release.
The program was provided to all band and choir students in the school district and all Carson High juniors and eighth graders from Carson Middle and Eagle Valley Middle schools.
The program featured recording artist Antonio Hart, vocalist and a former winner of the institute’s international jazz vocals competition Lisa Henry and jazz educator Dr. JB Dyas at the Carson City Community Center on March 10 and 11.
Combining performance with educational information, the “informances” were also presented by the institute’s National Peer-to-Peer Jazz Quintet, comprising five of the country’s most gifted high school music students including drummer Aiden Barrios, 17, from Los Angeles; trumpeter Nathaniel Harrigan, 18, from Chicago; tenor saxophonist Kiara Rouse, 17, from Kissimmee, Fla.; pianist Isaac Serrato, 17, from Houston; and bassist Jonathan Stiff, 18, from Washington, D.C.
The event included an assembly program featuring musical performances for all students, followed by workshops for each school’s jazz band and choir.
“We’ve found that sometimes young people can learn about certain things better from kids their same age, and one of them is jazz,” said jazz great Herbie Hancock, Institute Chairman, NEA Jazz Master and Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). “And when you hear how accomplished these musicians are at such a young age, you know their peers are going to listen.”
Besides playing jazz at a level that belies their years, the students talked with their Nevada peers about what jazz is, why it’s important to America and how a jazz ensemble represents a perfect democracy. They also discussed the important American values that jazz represents: teamwork, diversity, the correlation of hard work and goal accomplishment, perseverance, the importance of finding a passion early in life, being persistent and believing in oneself.
Immediately following the informances, Hart, Henry and Dyas conducted jazz workshops for Carson City jazz band and choir students.
“I was really looking forward to going to Carson City and Reno,” Harrigan said. “So, so different from where I live in Chicago, especially in March.”