Jazz Instrumental Lab Summer Session

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Description

Age: Adults (18+)
Type: Group Class
Term: Remote Summer
Term Length: 6 Weeks
Schedule:
  • Tuesdays at 7:30pm
Duration: 90 Minutes
Class Size: 6
Price: $180
Coaches: Matt Pavolka, Peter Apfelbaum
Contact: 718.622.3300, info@bkcm.org
This 90 minute summer session is open to adult strings, woodwinds, brass, piano and drum/percussion players ages 18+ of the intermediate level looking to expand their jazz knowledge and improvisational ability. Students work in a small group with a professional jazz musician coach, learning classic jazz repertoire, blues forms and standards from the great American songbook. Students learn how to build a solo through improvisation exercises aimed at broadening the player’s vocabulary. Students receive play along tracks and materials to use for practice each day after class. A computer and a wifi connection are required for this class.  
Topics Covered:
  • Jazz Theory
  • Improvisation
  • Soloing over changes
  • Developing jazz vocabulary
  • Analyze jazz standards
  • Play along tracks and practice materials
  • History of jazz
BKCM Jazz Program
Through our newly expanded menu of jazz opportunities, pre-teens, teens and adults explore the world of jazz and improvisation, learning repertoire that includes classic jazz standards, contemporary works, original compositions and music from around the world. Students work closely with professional jazz faculty and perform at private concerts, public recitals and community events. With an average student-teacher ratio of five to one, students receive personalized attention in an intimate group setting.
Our Faculty
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.
Peter Apfelbaum 
Berkeley, California-born and based in Brooklyn since 1998, multi-instrumentalist and composer Peter Apfelbaum is best known as leader of the genre-mashing world music 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.  An influential figure in new jazz for over three decades, he 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 2007 he received Chamber Music America’s New Works and Presentation award, creating the suite “Aural Histories” for Hieroglyphics, which toured throughout the US and Europe in 2008. 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. Equally proficient on saxophone, piano and percussion, he currently also performs with Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra and Dafnis Prieto’s Quartet and Sextet and is featured on Prieto’s big band album, “Back To The Sunset”, which won a Grammy in 2018 for Best Latin Jazz Album.
Apfelbaum has increasingly made teaching a focus of his professional career, leading workshops in composition and improvisation throughout the U.S. and abroad. Since 2016, he has been an Artistic Director of the Woodstock, NY-based Creative Music Foundation, an organization dedicated to presenting workshops by innovative musicians and composers. He has led student ensembles at Dartmouth College, Banff Center For The Arts, University of Iowa, California Jazz Conservatory, the New School and Nijmegen Jazz Meeting in the Netherlands, and has been a guest conductor of the Vermont All-State High School Jazz Ensemble. He also helped create and develop Moody’s Jazz Artists in Residence, an annual music camp for kids held in Truckee, CA, where he has been on the faculty every year since 2008.
Registration Info
To sign up click here or call the registration desk at 718-622-3300. To see class policies for remote learning click here

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