Find your voice in the jazz tradition.
Designed for both singers who are new to jazz and those who are looking to deepen their understanding jazz vocal styles, this course is taught by acclaimed jazz vocalist Annie Chen. Alongside Chen and an accompanist, students engage in jazz vocal warmups that build strong singing technique, hone their craft as jazz singers, and develop a sensitivity to jazz rhythms and the stylistic intricacies of swing, jazz and blues through scat singing and lyric interpretation.
COURSE OVERVIEW
SECTIONS & SCHEDULE
Two different sections of Jazz Vocal Lab will be offered in Fall 2025. Both begin in September and run for 16 weeks.
LEVEL 1
Wednesdays, 7:30-8:30 p.m.
Level 1 is for singers who have no prior experience singing jazz or want to brush up their skills in rhythmic phrasing and styles. Students must have prior experience with singing, but no experience in Jazz is required.
LEVEL 2
Wednesdays, 8:30-9:30 p.m.
Level 2 is for singers who have experience singing jazz with a pianist or ensemble and want to take their jazz vocal singing to the next level by exploring improvisation and scat singing.
HOW TO APPLY
New Students
An audition is required for new students. Please click the link below to submit a video audition online. If you would prefer to schedule an in-person audition, please email elijah.thomas@bkcm.org.
Returning Students
To register for next semester as a student who has taken the Adult Vocal Lab before, simply call the registration team at 718-622-3300. Returning students are not required to audition again, but must still call to register.
Financial Aid
Financial aid is available for qualifying students. To apply, please contact kris.mandapat@bkcm.org and fill out the financial aid application. For complete information on our registration process and policies, please click here.
ABOUT ANNIE CHEN
Annie Chen is a vocalist, composer, and bandleader from Beijing, based in New York since 2013. Her distinctive style draws on a rich continuum of musical traditions from Asia, Europe, and the Americas. This creative vision – showcased on her releases Pisces the Dreamer (2014), Secret Treetop (2018) and Guardians (2024) – is supported by years of experience in China’s jazz, blues, and funk scenes as well as active study and collaboration within New York’s vibrant jazz community.
As a bandleader and composer, Chen has performed extensively in prestigious NYC venues including the Blue Note, Cornelia St. Cafe, Nublu, Flushing Town Hall, DROM, Shapeshifter Lab, and Club Bonafide. In China, she has brought her music to festivals such as Solana Summertime Festival, Chaoyang Music Festival, Beijing Nine-Gates Jazz Festival, CD Jazz Week, and the Shanghai International Jazz Festival, as well as venues such as Blue Note Beijing, East Shore Jazz Club, DDC, JiangHu, Guangzhou Xinghai Concert Hall and JZ Club Shanghai and Hangzhou. At JZ Club Hangzhou she led a band as artist in residence in 2015, 2016, and 2018.
Annie’s current focus is her Guardians ensemble, whose self-titled debut released to critical acclaim on February 23, 2024 on JZ Music. Centered on an environmentally themed programmatic suite, the album features a dynamic cast of improvisers including Satoshi Takeishi (percussion), Fung Chern Hwei (violin), Vitor Goncalves (piano/accordion), Alex LoRe (woodwinds), Marius Duboule (guitar), and Mat Muntz (bass). The project combines Annie’s compositional sense of storytelling and imagery with an experimental improvisational vocabulary, representing an exciting new chapter in her creative output. Annie is also an experienced educator, having offered extensive, recurring masterclasses on vocal jazz performance and jazz appreciation as part of her residency in Hangzhou, China. In addition to online private and group lessons, Chen was recently commissioned by Beijing’s Ear King Music Company to produce Jazz Singing Masterclass Vol.1, an educational video series intended for students in China. As part of her mission to forge connections between distant musical worlds, she is also producing JZ Club on Air, a radio show dedicated to exposing Chinese audiences to the diverse and forward-thinking jazz currently emerging from New York.
For more information about Annie Chen, please visit anniechenjazz.com. For further information regarding the Jazz Travelers program, please email the Jazz Program Manager, Elijah J. Thomas, at elijah.thomas@bkcm.org.