RR: JazzReach has had multi-media educational programs geared towards specific grades, i.e. Duke Ellington for grades 3-6, and Miles Davis for grades 6-12. How do you determine the age for those particular programs?

HS: For me, it’s kind of an intuitive thing. I don’t have a background in education. I guess what it is is that I’ll consider the content and the objectives of the program—what are we trying to say? What are we trying to achieve? What are we trying to convey? What’s our point? Why are we here? Is it something that can be presented in an interactive way? Can this feature audience participation? But, then, you get into other areas, or other facets of the music. For instance, we have another program called Stolen Moments: The First 400 Years of Jazz, which is a lot of information crammed into an hour long program. It, literally, presents the entire history of jazz, using American 20th Century as a backdrop. You want to illustrate all the ways that the art form reflects all of its different phases, particularly as it relates to American culture.

In other words, we want the music to sort of reflect the post-Depression Era, the new Industrial Age, and the post-war era. You want to address the Civil Rights movement in a way that John Coltrane is related to that movement, and the way his music reflects that period in time. That’s obviously content and information that doesn’t necessarily resonant with 4th graders. They are not necessarily going to get it.

In other programs, I also have to take into consideration the performing art centers who are our partners. Often times, it is much easier for them to get elementary school kids out of class to go on field trips than it is to get the older kids to leave school. We tend to have a few more programs that target elementary school age, but as far as how we make it accessible, I literally try to go into the head of a 7-year old, or an 8-year old, and just think what would I think is cool? I also try to really make our scripts have more of a conversational tone, rather than a condescending lecture tone, like “this is the bass!” I don’t talk in that language, and our narrator doesn’t deliver it in that tone. It’s always on their level, but very conversational and very fluid and very fun.

I’m careful. Obviously, I have to pay attention to vocabulary, and making sure that I’m not using words that they may not know. It’s really about that. But, then, if I feel like we need to continue to broaden our repertoire of educational programs, I’ll give some thought to what else can we do? There are infinite possibilities. We try to create a new program at least once every two years. We introduced two programs last year—the ones you mentioned, Ellington and Miles Davis. Those were both commissioned. We actually didn’t intend on doing those type of biographical programs, but two different art presenters approached us around the same time, and asked if we would create programs around those two artists.

It was really fun to do, and the music was great, obviously, and two new programs were added to our repertoire, which was great. That was last year, and I am not quite sure what the next one will be. We’ll see.

RR: You were speaking early about the globalization of jazz. The new record, Big Drum/Small World features five compositions from five different geographic regions. Was there a sixth piece, from West Africa, to be included at one point?

HS: It’s funny. Lionel Loueke, who you may know, has been touring with Herbie Hancock for the last five, six, seven years, and has released a number of records on Blue Note, and I love his music. We commissioned him to write a piece for the Big Drum/Small World program. I said that we were creating two distinct versions of the program. One is for kids, and one will be for the main stage. The one for the kids will require an audience participation segment. He delivered his tune on time, and everything was great. He said something to me in passing, “The kids will really love playing this.” And I said, “No, it’s actually_our_ group that’s playing it.” He said, “Well, wait a minute. What?” And I said, “Yeah, the tune is really for our ensemble. It’s not a student band.” And he said, “Ohhh, man. I thought it was for the kids, man. I would have written something completely different for you cats, man.” And I said, “Can you write something else?” He said, “I’m really busy, but I’m going to try.” So, I bugged him for probably about seven or eight months, and he was on a whirlwind tour with Herbie Hancock, and I think he was trying to put his own record out at the time. He just became too overwhelmed and too busy to write another tune. In contrast to all the other music that was written, I didn’t feel that tune really reflected his true abilities as a composer. I didn’t reflect what he is capable of as a composer. Unfortunately, it was never delivered.

There was another tune that was commissioned by an Argentinean bass player named Pedro Giraudo, but that tune was delivered after we recorded the record. It’s hard to get all those guys in the same room, including getting the studio time, and an engineer, and, so, unfortunately, it was a timing thing. There are two tunes that conceivably we wanted to have on the record. It’s a relatively short record, but so is A Love Supreme, and that’s not a bad record.

RR: How did you select those global regions presented on Big Drum/Small World, and how did you select those particular five composer/musicians to contribute to the piece, including one Metta Quintet band member?

HS: A lot of it was being aware of all those guys and loving their music. [As far as Marcus Strickland, Metta Quintet tenor and soprano saxophonist’s contribution] we wanted to make sure that the U.S. was represented, and that we were still committed to the roots of the music. We wanted [Strickland’s “From Here Onwards”] to reflect and somehow be in line with the sound of American music.

It’s funny because there are so many great Latin musicians, but I didn’t want there to be like three guys from Latin America, so it was hard. There was Yosvanny Terry from Cuba [his track, “Summer Relief”] and Miguel Zenon from Puerto Rico [“Sica”], and they are very close to each other, and they are both Caribbean, but I do think that, first of all, they are both great artists, and they are both great composers. Also, their musical sensibilities and visions are so different from one another that I wasn’t concerned about their respective tunes sounding the same. It was sort of really trying to pick guys who are pretty well-known, at least in international jazz circles, but whose music I’m a fan of, particularly Miguel and Yosvanny.

We have the Middle East represented with Omer Avital [from Israel, his contribution, [“BaKarem”], and we have India represented [via Italy] with Rudresh Mahanthappa [“Crabcakes”], and we have Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the States. I think it is pretty broad and pretty diverse.

RR: And not sounding like an eight-course meal where the pieces don’t go together.

HS: Exactly. We wanted some creative cohesion.

RR: The band, itself, has been together for at least around ten years, right?

HS: Sort of different configurations. We’ve all been friends for a long time, but they are also people who I’ve spent a lot of time on the road with who have embraced our organizational vision, our organizational mission. I think they all share an understanding of how important it is to reach young people. These are people who are just exceptional instrumentalists, but they are also a pleasure to be with on the road. When I’m trying to find musicians, they are people who I want to be around. There is certainly that contingent of musicians who don’t like getting up early, or could care less about kids. They are just sort of in their ivory tower, and just want to nurture their own gift, and that’s about it—“don’t bother me.” That’s just not the type of musician that we need in our circle. There are just a number of characteristics and criteria: be a great person, be humble, enjoy being of service to young people and to communities, and be deeply committed to your craft and your instrument. They are all professionals. They show up on time. They’re not crazy. They’re not wild. They’re not out until 7 in the morning, and only just show up at our 7:30 lobby call for a show for young people, having been up all night. They are all really down-to-earth good people.

RR: Is it safe to say that you’ve personally come a long way from Tucson, Arizona?

HS: Sure. Yeah. It’s been an amazing…as most people are, you are always looking ahead. You always want to be where you’re not, so I don’t often rest on my laurels, or I really take time and thinking, “Wow, I really accomplished a lot.” I’m always thinking, “God, if we can only do this.” But, certainly, of course. I was a product of public school programs. I had music in my family. As I mentioned earlier, my two grandparents were classical musicians. I don’t know if I can go so far to say that it was in the blood, but it doesn’t seem unusual for me to go into music in that respect.

From high school, I went to the Berklee College of Music, and I was exposed to so much, and it was the first time I really had access to all of my heroes, and access to musicians who are my own age, peers who were very disciplined and very serious. That experience in Boston informed me about how much work really needs to be done, and how serious and committed one has to be to go into, particularly, jazz. Obviously, none of us are going into it for the money. But, there are certain artistic standards that you have to meet in order to have other musicians enjoy playing with you. In college, I got a lot of dirty looks from kids my own age: “Come on, man. Go fuckin’ practice.” But, that’s good. That’s inspiring. That’s motivating. So, it was great to be thrust into that environment with really virtuosic young people, who are just very, very disciplined.

Coupled with, what then were, two pretty great jazz clubs in Boston, and going there night after night after night, and getting to hear the greatest musicians ever. Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, Billy Higgins, Al Foster, Joe Henderson, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Tommy Flanagan, and Milt Jackson–all these amazing icons of jazz music, and I was sitting two feet away from them. Four years of that goes a long way. 20 years in New York goes a long way, too.

RR: Let’s end up with your thoughts on the JazzReach Summer Institute.

HS: We haven’t actually presented the pilot program yet. It’s a pretty expensive thing. It’s pretty costly, so we are targeting our performing presenters, who we partner with during the normal presenting season, who might be dark in the summer time, and want to offer their community summer programming for kids. We are putting it out there. Nobody has bitten yet, but it is something that we want to offer to basically any community who feels like that they don’t really have great teachers available, or great programs to offer in the summer time. It’s a way that we are trying to expand the scope of our artistic programming, but it has yet to be piloted.

RR: And making JazzReach a 365-day (or, 366) per year program.

HS: Yeah. Yeah. That’s exactly right. We’ve been traditionally dormant in the summer time, and I don’t really like that.

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