Former name | Arizona Jazz Academy, Tucson Community School of Music, TJS: Jazzworks |
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Founder | Doug Tidaback, Scott Black, Brice Winston |
Director | Brice Winston, Scott Black, Joesph Rader |
Address | 3233 S Pinal Vista , , Arizona , 85713 , USA (32.187442, -110.936173) |
Website | www |
Tucson Jazz Institute (TJI) is an independent jazz school home to award-winning ensembles such as the Ellington Big Band and the Concord Combo. TJI is owned and operated by Brice Winston and Scott Black, profesional musicians in the southern Arizona region. Many students from Tucson Jazz Institute have gone on to become career musicians.
Tucson Jazz Institute specializes in education for styles of Big Band music, Bebop, and Hard Bop music. Ensembles perform music from Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Buddy Rich, Charlie Parker, Wayne Shorter, Art Blakey, Benny Golson and more. Combos learn concepts of improvisation over chord-changes of music. Classes meet on Sundays, Tuesdays, or Saturdays. [1]
The TJI Ellington Big Band competes in the Essentially Ellington national competition annually and has one the 1st place price on many occasions with coutless students receiving personal adwards. [2] Other TJI Ensembles compete in more regional festivals such as the NAU Jazz Festival in Flagstaff, Arizona [3] and the ASU Highland Jazz Festival in Gilbert, Arizona. [4]
Tucson Jazz Institute currently has 3 Big Bands and 5 Combos. After the pandemic the school was hit hard leading to this small number. Ensembles include:
Tucson Jazz Institute has sponsored a high school jazz jam session meeting every Wednesday from 6-8PM. The jam session is led by a house band consisting of TJI's top students and alumni. Currently the house band consists of David Nguyen, Trumpet; Jaxon Hirsh, Bari Sax; Zeke Hirsh, Bass; Jacob Nguyen, Piano; Daniel Estrada, Drums. This jam session happens at the GloBall restaurant at the Sheraton Hotel & Suites (5151 E Grant Rd. Tucson, Az)
TJI formerly had music technology classes where students were trained on the usage of recording equipment, mixing boards, recording software, and CD production. [5] During TJI's time under the Tucson Community School of Music, TJI also had ensembles available to adults, these were taken over by Pima Community College. Additionally, during the TCSM control there was the Tucson Symphonic Winds, a wind ensemble meeting Thurday evenings. [6] TCSM also had beginging band classes for all ages. [7]
Arizona Jazz Academy was originally founded in the early 2000s eventual reorganizing as Tucson Community School of Music with a sub-brand of Tucson Jazz Institute in 2008 [8]
Around 2017, Tucson Jazz Institute moved from their location at 6061 E Broadway Blvd. Tucson, Az to their current home at Utterback Middle School.
In 2019, founder Doug Tidaback left the program for unknowen reasons moving to Denver, Colorado with his family.
The Tucson Jazz Institute is supported by the Tucson Jazz Music Foundation (TJMFDN) with finnacial support for travel and registration costs associated with competitions. [9] TJMFDN also provides scholarships to students of TJI that are unable to pay the tuition. [10] TJMFDN has also sponsored clinics with profesional jazz musicians such as: Kenny Rampton, Ron Carter, [11] Jimmy Heath, [12] Emmet Cohen, Russell Schmidt, Sherman Irby, [13] Michael Weiss [14] [15] , Roxy Coss, [14] and Alex Hahn.
In February 2024, TJMFDN announced in partnership with Hotel Congress's Century Room jazz club, an education program providing oppourtunities to all jazz students around the Tucson region. In this program the Century Room was made free to school bands for use as well as a cost reduction to students for tickets to the venue. [16]
Tucson Jazz Institute has had many students audition for the Grammy Band. However, only two have been accepted into the ensembe, John Black [17] & Miranda Anew [18] [19]
A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s and dominated jazz in the early 1940s when swing was most popular. The term "big band" is also used to describe a genre of music, although this was not the only style of music played by big bands.
The swing era was the period (1933–1947) when big band swing music was the most popular music in the United States, especially for teenagers. Though this was its most popular period, the music had actually been around since the late 1920s and early 1930s, being played by black bands led by such artists as Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Bennie Moten, Cab Calloway, Earl Hines, and Fletcher Henderson, and white bands from the 1920s led by the likes of Jean Goldkette, Russ Morgan and Isham Jones. An early milestone in the era was from "the King of Swing" Benny Goodman's performance at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles on August 21, 1935, bringing the music to the rest of the country. The 1930s also became the era of other great soloists: the tenor saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Lester Young; the alto saxophonists Benny Carter and Johnny Hodges; the drummers Chick Webb, Gene Krupa, Jo Jones and Sid Catlett; the pianists Fats Waller and Teddy Wilson; the trumpeters Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Bunny Berigan, and Rex Stewart.
...And His Mother Called Him Bill is a studio album by Duke Ellington recorded in the wake of the 1967 death of his long-time collaborator, Billy Strayhorn. It won the Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album in 1968.
Tucson High Magnet School, commonly referred to as THMS, THS, or Tucson High, is a public high school in Tucson, Arizona. It is part of the Tucson Unified School District with magnet programs in Technology, Visual Arts, and Performing Arts. The school is located adjacent to the University of Arizona and is close to the Downtown Arts District. It is the oldest high school in Arizona, having been established in 1892 and then re-established in 1906. The school celebrated its centennial in 2006. In terms of enrollment, THMS is the largest high school in southern Arizona and the eleventh-largest in Arizona, with more than 3,200 students enrolled.
The GRP All-Star Big Band was a contemporary big band assembled in the late 1980s by Dave Grusin and Larry Rosen, the founders of GRP Records. The band played new arrangements of popular jazz pieces from the 1950s and 1960s.
The Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz is a non-profit music education organization founded in 1986. Before 2019, it was known as the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, but was then renamed after its longtime board chairman, Herbie Hancock.
The Widespread Depression Orchestra was a nine-piece jazz ensemble founded in 1972 at Vermont's Marlboro College.
James Louis Chirillo is an American jazz guitarist, banjoist, composer, arranger, and band leader.
John Serry Jr. is an American jazz pianist and composer, as well as a composer of contemporary classical music works that feature percussion, on which he also doubles. He is a son of the accordionist and composer John Serry. His debut solo album was 'Exhibition', for which he received a Grammy Nomination for his composition, 'Sabotage'.
New Orleans Suite is a studio album by the American pianist, composer, and bandleader Duke Ellington, recorded and released on the Atlantic label in 1970. The album contains the final recordings of longtime Ellington saxophonist Johnny Hodges, who died between the album's two recording sessions. The album won a Grammy Award in 1971 for Best Jazz Performance by a Big Band.
The Panama Jazz Festival was founded in September 2003 by pianist and Grammy winner Danilo Pérez.
The American Music Program is a youth jazz band in Portland, Oregon founded by jazz trumpeter, composer, and educator Thara Memory. This non-profit youth music program mentors primary school students from 7th-12th grade. On May 9, 2015, the group won Jazz at Lincoln Center's Essentially Ellington Competition, playing Ellington's Tattooed Bride from memory.
The University of California Jazz Ensembles, also known as the UC Jazz Ensembles, UC Jazz, or UCJE, is the student jazz organization founded in 1967 on the University of California, Berkeley, campus. Founded in 1967, it comprises one or more big bands, numerous jazz combos, a vocal jazz ensemble, an alumni big band, and instructional classes. With a mission statement to foster a community for the performance, study, and promotion of jazz at U.C. Berkeley, its Wednesday Night big band provides free concerts every Thursday noon on Lower Sproul Plaza, its various units perform throughout the San Francisco Bay Area including area high schools, travel to collegiate jazz festivals, and perform overseas, and for many years it sponsored the annual Pacific Coast Jazz Festival. It also provides master classes by its instructors and clinics by prominent guest artists. It has nurtured numerous musicians who have become professional jazz musicians and educators. UC Jazz Ensembles is one of three groups, with the Cal (marching) Band and UC Choral Ensembles, forming Student Musical Activities (SMA), a department within Cal Performances on the U.C. Berkeley campus. Its members are primarily U.C. Berkeley undergraduate and graduate students, representing many academic disciplines.
Time Tripping is an album released by the Fullerton College Jazz Band for the Discovery Records Trend AM-PM label, it became the Down Beat Magazine 1st Place Award Winner in the College Big Band Jazz category for 1983.
Steve Wiest(néJohn Stephen Wiest; born 1957) is an American trombonist, composer, arranger, big band director, music educator at the collegiate level, jazz clinician, author, and illustrator/cartoonist. From 1981 to 1985, he was a featured trombonist and arranger with the Maynard Ferguson Band. Wiest is in his eleventh year as Associate Professor of Jazz Studies and Commercial Music at the University of Denver Lamont School of Music. He is the Coordinator of the 21st Century Music Initiative at the school. Wiest has been a professor for thirty-six of the forty-four years that he has been a professional trombonist, composer, and arranger. From 2007 to 2014, Wiest was Associate Professor of Music in Jazz Studies at the University of North Texas College of Music and, from March 2009 to August 2014, he was director of the One O'Clock Lab Band and coordinator of the Lab Band program. At North Texas, Wiest also taught conducting, trombone, and oversaw The U-Tubes — the College of Music's jazz trombone band. Wiest is a three-time Grammy nominee — individually in 2008 for Best instrumental Arrangement and in 2010 for Best Instrumental Composition, and collaboratively in 2010 for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album, which he directed. As of 2013, Wiest has in excess of 58 arrangements and compositions to his credit, which include 10 original compositions from his current project (see 2013–2014 project below).
Big Boss Band is the 1990 studio album of American musician George Benson on Warner Bros. featuring the Count Basie Orchestra. This is Benson's second consecutive album which returns to his jazz roots after his successful pop career in the 1980s, and also his debut as sole producer of an album. The genre is mainly big band swing with some Michel Legrand and R&B thrown in.
Joe Daley was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and music teacher. Daley was part of the Chicago jazz scene for 40 years. Musicians who studied with Daley include Grammy winners David Sanborn and Paul Winter, Emmy winner James DiPasquale, Richard Corpolongo, Chuck Domanico, and John Klemmer.
All Blues is an album by the GRP All-Star Big Band that won the Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance in 1996.
Digital Duke is an album by Mercer Ellington and the Duke Ellington Orchestra that won the Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album in 1988.
Live at the Theatre Boulogne-Billancourt/Paris, Vol. 1 is an album by Mingus Dynasty, billed as Big Band Charlie Mingus.