JAZZ EDUCATION NETWORK

TRADITIONAL JAZZ CURRICULUM

The Traditional Jazz Curriculum Kit is designed to enable educators to teach young people how to perform the timeless music of Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Bix Beiderbecke, Jack Teagarden, Bunk Johnson, George Lewis, Lu Watters, Turk Murphy, and Eddie Condon, as well as acquaint them with the top traditional jazz artists of today.
 
The kit includes:
  • lesson plans
  • teacher’s guides
  • music arrangements
  • audio tracks
  • video masterclasses
  • classroom poster
 
Email [email protected] to request a free kit!
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* Please note that due to licensing and funding restrictions, physical kits can only be sent to addresses within the U.S. and Canada.

Traditional jazz curriculum kit

The JEN Conference in San Diego marked the debut of the Traditional Jazz Curriculum Kit, a free package of materials in CD-ROM form that was given to all educators in attendance. Years in the making, the Kit is the first-ever comprehensive curriculum for teaching New Orleans-based styles of jazz to student musicians, and includes lesson plans, teacher’s guides, music arrangements, audio tracks, video masterclasses, and a classroom poster.

photo by René Huemer

more about trad jazz curriculum

The curriculum was developed by David Robinson, Jr., Adjunct Professor of Music at George Mason University, together with the Traditional Jazz Educators Network (TJEN). Serving as a consultant to the project is Dr. John Edward Hasse, Curator of American Music at the Smithsonian Institution. This valuable resource is being provided by JEN as a service to the field under funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation, and other sponsors.

Maintaining the full diversity of jazz has become a challenge as the earlier stylistic traditions have begun to fade from view, particularly the New Orleans styles and their outgrowths, collectively called traditional or “trad” jazz. These styles remain valid and essential means of jazz expression, yet the passage of time has produced generations of professional performers and educators that are unfamiliar with them.

Distributed nationally (10,000 copies) following its San Diego debut, the Traditional Jazz Curriculum Kit is helping to restore the full spectrum of colors to the jazz educator’s palette.

The project seeks to facilitate:
  1. The revitalization of traditional jazz styles through the increased participation of young people
  2. The formation of youth traditional jazz ensembles in schools
  3. Heightened appreciation and awareness of traditional jazz among music educators.
Through application of the lessons in the Kit, student musicians will perform traditional New Orleans jazz and its outgrowths and will compose new tunes in the idiom.
The Traditional Jazz Curriculum Kit is designed for use within existing scholastic or extracurricular music instruction programs. It has been designed by teachers for teachers; it supplements but does not supplant a school’s existing music curriculum, and it closely ties to the National Standards for Music Education. The Kit presents traditional jazz not as an historical artifact, but as a living art form that remains relevant and exciting today and gives today’s young players vast opportunities for self-realization and self-expression. The Curriculum Kit has been deployed in classrooms across the country, from middle schools to universities, resulting in overwhelmingly positive response.  This crucial project directly addresses the field’s lack of standards-based tools for sustaining early jazz traditions.
 
The kit can be requested by emailing [email protected].

Love Trad Jazz?
This is for you.

 

JEN TRADITIONAL JAZZ SOCIETY

 
All JEN members with an interest in traditional New Orleans jazz and its outgrowths, as well as pre-war big band styles, are urged to join the JEN Traditional Jazz Society, a JEN Signature Society.  There are no additional dues required to be a part of the JENTJS. 
 
The mission of the JENTJS is to foster awareness and appreciation of traditional (“trad”) jazz (the New Orleans-based styles of jazz and their outgrowths) and other early jazz styles among students, educators, musicians, and audiences.  The organization’s goals are to increase the presence of “early” jazz styles at the annual JEN Conference (professional and student performances, research presentations, clinics, exhibit booths, etc.); promote the concept that trad jazz and early big band styles are not museum pieces, or simply the foundation of something else, but remain relevant, exciting music today; build awareness within JEN of the magnitude and breadth of early jazz; forge a partnership between the traditional jazz community and JEN; and encourage student groups/directors to include early jazz in their programs.  Various initiatives are planned.
 
To get on board, contact Dave at [email protected]. You can also visit the JENTJS on Facebook.
 

ADVANCING EDUCATION. PROMOTING PERFORMANCE. DEVELOPING AUDIENCES.

JEN is committed to representing and cultivating diversity, equity, inclusion, and access in all areas of its operation including staff, board members, volunteers, presenters, clinicians, performers and audiences. This commitment is present in all programs and decision making.

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charlotte lang

Swiss/Dutch saxophonist Charlotte Lang was born in 1996 in Basel and studied the bachelor and master program at the JAZZCAMPUS Basel under the guidance of Domenic Landolf and Daniel Blanc. She is currently studying the Master of Music in Global Jazz at the Berklee College of Music in Boston under the artistic direction of Danilo Pérez. In addition she is part of Terri Lyne Carrington’s Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice.

 

From 2015 to 2018, Charlotte she was a member of the Swiss National Youth Jazz Orchestra under the direction of Christian Muthspiel. Since 2020, she became a member of the German National Youth Jazz Orchestra (Bundesjazzorchester Deutschland), under the direction of Niels Klein and Ansgar Striepens. She also plays is the Austrian FJO (Frauen Jazz Orchester→Women Jazz Orchestra of Austria).

 

In 2021, Charlotte founded her own Quintet the „Charlotte Lang Group“, for what she is composing, arranging and booking. In the fall 2023, her first album will be recorded and hopefully released by a renowned label.

 

Charlotte plays in the “Swiss Jazz Orchestra” and the “Zurich Jazz Orchestra”, the two professional Big Bands of Switzerland.

Charlotte recently got the unique opportunity to write a monthly blog for the Swiss Jazz & Blues Magazine called JAZZTIME, to tell readers about her time at abroad and specifically her time at Berklee. Her graduate program lasts only until the summer of 2023. She hopes to stay in the United States to enlarge her network and build her musical career.