Adult Jazz Ensembles

Age: Adults (18+)

Type: Jazz

Terms: Fall, Spring

Duration: 16 Weeks

Class Size: Variable by class section

Price:  Jazz Foundations: $672, Jazz Lab: $720

Instructors: 

Contact: cmsadmin@bkcm.org

Location: BKCM

Adult students who are completely new to jazz music, desire to renew their understanding of historic fundamentals of jazz, and have minimal experience playing jazz in an ensemble setting are welcome to join this class. Students explore the basic modes for improvising, gain familiarity with the blues form and develop an understanding of how to improvise over chord changes. Students explore jazz swing feel and phrasing and how each instrument functions in a group. Our faculty perform alongside the students in a mentorship model experience.

Adult musicians with extensive experience on their instrument and performing jazz music in an ensemble setting have the opportunity to collaborate, improvise, rehearse and develop confidence in their jazz playing. Students work with a broad range of challenging jazz repertoire, highlighting various musical forms and standard selections from the Great American Songbook while digging deeper into the world of improvisation. Our faculty perform alongside the students in a mentorship model experience.

COURSE SECTIONS

Sundays, 3:30-5:00 PM (with Matt Pavolka)
Tuesdays, 8:15-9:45 PM (with Peter Apfelbaum)

Wednesdays, 8:00-9:30 PM (with Peter Apfelbaum)

Thursdays, 8:00-9:30 PM (with Elijah J. Thomas)

If you have not been part of a BKCM Adult Jazz Ensemble before, you are required to either submit an audition video or schedule an in-person audition and submit the Registration Questionnaire. Audition instructions are below — if you would like to schedule an in-person audition, please email the Jazz Program Manager, Elijah J. Thomas, at elijah.thomas@bkcm.org.

If you have participated in any Adult Jazz Ensemble previously, please complete the Registration Questionnaire, then contact our registrars at 718-622-3300 to complete re-registration.

ALL students, new and returning, are required to complete the Registration Questionnaire form. This form is critical to ensure best placement in an ensemble, and can be found below.

Improvisation
Improvisation

The core experience of both of our Adult Jazz Ensembles is about playing in an ensemble setting. Coached by musicians who’ve improvised alongside everyone from Don Cherry and Ben Monder to Trey Anastasio, you’ll develop both the underlying jazz theory understanding and the listening skills to get more comfortable improvising in the jazz context.

Collaboration
Collaboration

By playing and learning every week with the same ensemble of fellow musicians and the same mentor, you will develop the ensemble playing and listening skills at the heart of jazz while building lasting musical and personal connections.

Performance
Performance

At the end of each semester, each Adult Jazz Ensemble section gives a public performance, building confidence in the live setting. There are also often additional performance opportunities throughout the year, including at community events like BKCM’s annual Open Stages festival.

Performance
Jazz Theory & History

In both Adult Jazz Ensembles, you’ll be immersed in jazz history and theory through a wide-ranging repertoire and the study of different jazz forms and improvisational modes. And every time you learn a new technique or concept, you’ll have the chance to apply it to your playing and explore it on your instrument.

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Peter Apfelbaum

Berkeley, CA-born and based in New York City since 1998, saxophonist/pianist/drummer and composer Peter Apfelbaum is best known as leader of the genre-mashing big band, Hieroglyphics, which he formed while still in high school in 1977. The ensemble, which began to attract international attention in the 1980’s for its unique fusing of elements of world music with the aesthetics of the jazz avant-garde, received a Grammy nomination in 1991 for the album “Signs Of Life” (Antilles) and helped launch the careers of fellow Berkeleyans Joshua Redman, Benny Green, Craig Handy and Steven Bernstein, among others. The current version of the ensemble, now in its 43rd year and known as New York Hieroglyphics, released “It Is Written” in 2005 and toured an extended work, “Aural Histories” (commissioned by Chamber Music America), throughout the U.S. in 2008-2009.

An influential figure in new jazz for over three decades, Apfelbaum has worked with some of the leading figures in contemporary music, including the late Don Cherry (whose group, Multikulti, Apfelbaum was Musical Director of from 1989-1995), Cecil Taylor, Harry Belafonte, Omar Sosa, Bill Laswell and Phish. He has been commissioned by the Kronos Quartet and the National Swedish Radio Orchestra, among others. In 2013 he formed Sparkler, an electronica-based, vocal-driven sextet, which released its debut EP, “I Colored It In For You,” on Laswell’s MOD Technologies label in 2015 and premiered the commissioned work “The Ambidextrous Nature Of The Universe” at the Newport Jazz Festival in 2016.

He currently performs with Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra and Dafnis Prieto’s Sextet. In 2017, Apfelbaum was named an Artistic Director of Creative Music Foundation, an organization dedicated to offering workshops by improvising musicians from diverse backgrounds. CMJ New Music Report has called Apfelbaum “A visionary, galvanic composer like few others of his time.”

Matt Pavolka

For twenty years, bassist/composer Matt Pavolka has been a vital force in the New York Jazz and Creative Music scenes. A partial list of musicians and bands that he has performed with includes Lee Konitz, Paul Motian, Guillermo Klein, Chris Cheek, Kevin Hayes, Ben Monder, House of Illusion, Josh Roseman’s Extended Constellations, Dave Binney, The Ryan Scott Orchestra, Magalie Souriou, Elysian Fields, Joe Beck, J. Geils, Tony Malaby, Bill McHenry, Matt Renzi and Ohad Talmor’s Newsreel. He has toured extensively in the United States, Europe and Japan and can be heard on many recordings, including releases from Magalie Souriou, Guillermo Klein, Marlon Browdon, Andre Fernandes, Nate Radley, Noah Preminger and House of Illusion. He has released two albums as a leader, “Something People Can Use,” on Tone Of A Pitch Records and “The Horns Band” on the Fresh Sounds, New Talent label.
 

Pavolka grew up in Bloomington, Indiana. He began playing the trombone at an early age and studied with David Baker before heading to Boston to attend the Berklee College of Music on a full scholarship as a trombonist at age 18. He switched his major to bass in his first year there and was awarded an outstanding performance award on that instrument as well as the Charles Mingus Award for his work as a composer. He moved to New York in 1994. In addition to his work as a performing musician, composer and bandleader, he is active as a music educator. He is also the musical director for the Redeye Grill in Manhattan’s live performance series. For more info, visit MattPavolka.com.

Elijah Thomas standing against a brick wall

Elijah J. Thomas

Elijah J. Thomas (he/him) is a Black Philadelphia-born, Harlem-based flutist, multi-instrumentalist, educator, producer, and composer/experimentalist. Elijah studied woodwind performance/improvisation with Dick Oatts, Tim Warfield, Jr., Walter Bell, and Dr. Cynthia Folio; composition with Kevin Rodgers, Dr. Cynthia Folio, and Dr. Maurice Wright; and music education studies with Dr. Rollo Dilworth and Dr. Allison Reynolds. Elijah has held teaching positions with Temple University Music Prep, Settlement Music School, Tune Up Philly (Philadelphia Youth Orchestra), Education Through Music, BASIS Independent Schools, and Carnegie Hall. He creates what he calls “enuff music”: music for Black healing and spiritual transcendence.

Notable work includes the commission and premier of his site-responsive work For Harlem for the new music organization Music At The Anthology, or MATA (debuted at the Kente Royal Gallery in Harlem, NYC, October 2021); collaboration with the International Contemporary Ensemble for their “Ensemble Evolution” partner program with The New School (2020-2024); winner of “Best Film Score” at the Pure Magic International Film Festival for the documentary short Fan of Cory (awarded February 2021 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands); and selection as one of ten commissioned composers of color to participate in the inaugural “Composing Inclusion” program, a joint collaboration between The Juilliard School, New York Philharmonic, and American Composers Forum (powered by the Sphinx Venture Fund, 2022–2024). Elijah is Musical Director of the non-profit performance-based organization Honk NYC!

For any additional questions related to this course, please contact the Jazz Program Manager at elijah.thomas@bkcm.org.