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The W. C. Handy Jazz Camp is sponsored jointly by the W. C. Handy Music Festival and the University of North Alabama (UNA), and is held annually in Florence, Alabama. Every year, the camp features an accomplished faculty, all members of the W. C. Handy Jazz All-Stars.
"The camp consists of four days of intensive music study at UNA", said Nancy Gonce, who assisted professional jazz musician Mike Shepherd and former UNA band director Dr. Edd Jones in establishing the camp as an educational extension of the area's annual W. C. Handy Music Festival. The founders set up the curriculum using state jazz honor-band criteria to help prepare students for the state level.
At the camp, young music students learn jazz through the study of music theory and improvisational concepts. Ensemble rehearsals are provided, as well as private lessons from professional musicians. Camp students, along with the accomplished musicians who make up the faculty, perform each year during the W. C. Handy Music Festival, which takes place throughout the Florence-Sheffield-Muscle Shoals area during the last week of July.
"Many of the students are in [middle or][ clarification needed ] high school jazz bands", Gonce said. "Others don't have jazz bands at their schools, but want to learn more about the musical technique."
The 2006 faculty featured a variety of professional musicians, including Ken Watters (trumpet), Howard Lamb (trombone), Rick Bell (saxophone), Tim Goodwin (bass), Mike Shepherd (drums), Ray Reach (piano – director of Student Jazz Programs at the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame) and Mel Deal (guitar). Hosts Dr. Edd Jones and Lloyd Jones (current director UNA's band program) and camp directors Terry Ownby, band director for Muscle Shoals Middle School, and James Ed Champion, former band director for Bradshaw High School, organized the 2006 camp.
The 2007 faculty included Ken Watters (trumpet), Howard Lamb (trombone), Tim Goodwin (bass), Chuck Redd (drums and vibraphone) and Ray Reach (piano – director of Student Jazz Programs at the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame).
The W. C. Handy Music Camp concludes each year with a concert in the UNA Band Room, featuring camp faculty and students. Following this, participating music students perform as the "Music Camp All-Stars" during the W. C. Handy Music Festival.
William Christopher Handy was an American composer and musician who referred to himself as the Father of the Blues. He was one of the most influential songwriters in the United States. One of many musicians who played the distinctively American blues music, Handy did not create the blues genre but was the first to publish music in the blues form, thereby taking the blues from a regional music style with a limited audience to a new level of popularity.
Muscle Shoals is the largest city in Colbert County, Alabama. It is located on the left bank of the Tennessee River in the northern part of the state and, as of the 2010 census, its population was 13,146. The estimated population in 2019 was 14,575.
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Alabama has played a central role in the development of both blues and country music. Appalachian folk music, fiddle music, gospel, spirituals, and polka have had local scenes in parts of Alabama. The Tuskegee Institute's School of Music, especially the Tuskegee Choir, is an internationally renowned institution. There are three major modern orchestras, the Mobile Symphony, the Alabama Symphony Orchestra and the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra; the last is the oldest continuously operating professional orchestra in the state, giving its first performance in 1955.
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The Preservation Hall Jazz Band is a New Orleans jazz band founded in New Orleans by tuba player Allan Jaffe in the early 1960s. The band derives its name from Preservation Hall in the French Quarter. In 2005, the Hall's doors were closed for a period of time due to Hurricane Katrina, but the band continued to tour.
The Florence-Muscle Shoals Metropolitan Area, commonly known as The Shoals, is a metropolitan statistical area in northwestern Alabama including the cities of Florence, Muscle Shoals, Tuscumbia, and Sheffield, and the counties of Lauderdale and Colbert. The 2020 Census population for the Shoals is 148,779 and an additional 410,000 commute to the Shoals daily as the economic, social, and educational center of northwest Alabama. The Shoals has also been known as the Tri-Cities and the Quad-Cities by locals.
The Marching Pride of North Alabama, is the official marching band of the University of North Alabama. The band is the largest organization on campus, and performs at all North Alabama Lions football home games, as well as local parades and high school competition exhibitions across the state.
Raymond Eugene Premru was an American trombonist, composer, and teacher who spent most of his career in London, England.
The International Sweethearts of Rhythm was the first integrated all-women's band in the United States. During the 1940s the band featured some of the best female musicians of the day. They played swing and jazz on a national circuit that included the Apollo Theater in New York City, the Regal Theater in Chicago, and the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C. After a performance in Chicago in 1943, the Chicago Defender announced the band was "one of the hottest stage shows that ever raised the roof of the theater!" They have been labeled "the most prominent and probably best female aggregation of the Big Band era". During feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s in America, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm became popular with feminist writers and musicologists who made it their goal to change the discourse on the history of jazz to include both men and women musicians. Flutist Antoinette Handy was one scholar who documented the story of these female musicians of color.
The Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame (AJHF) is an organization and museum in Birmingham, Alabama, United States. It was founded in 1978, and opened as museum on September 18, 1993, with a mission "to foster, encourage, educate, and cultivate a general appreciation of the medium of jazz music as a legitimate, original and distinctive art form indigenous to America. Its mission is also to preserve a continued and sustained program of illuminating the contribution of the State of Alabama through its citizens, environment, demographics and lore, and perpetuating the heritage of jazz music."
The Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame All-Stars is a working jazz ensemble, featuring some of the finest jazz musicians Alabama has to offer. This group is the faculty of the Jazz Education Department of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame and the faculty of the Fun With Jazz Educational Program, begun through the Alys Stephens Center (2006), and now administered by the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame (2007). Through these educational programs, the AJHoF Allstars, directed by Ray Reach, seek to fulfill a mission "...to foster, encourage, educate, and cultivate a general appreciation of the medium of jazz music as a legitimate, original and distinctive art form indigenous to America. Its mission is also to preserve a continued and sustained program of illuminating the contribution of the State of Alabama through its citizens, environment, demographics and lore, and perpetuating the heritage of jazz music".
The W. C. Handy Music Festival is held annually in Florence, Alabama, sponsored by the Music Preservation Society, Inc., in honor of Florence native W. C. Handy, the "Father of the Blues." The non-profit Music Preservation Society was formed in 1982, with the mission to preserve, present, and promote the musical heritage of Northwest Alabama.
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The Pharaohs, an American soul/jazz/funk group, were formed in 1962 out of a student band, The Jazzmen, at Crane Junior College in Chicago, Illinois. This early incarnation comprised Louis Satterfield on trombone, Charles Handy on trumpet, and Don Myrick on alto saxophone. They were joined by Fred Humphrey on piano, Ernest McCarthy on bass guitar and Maurice White on drums. Satterfield, White, and Handy were studio musicians at Chess Records in Chicago.
Muscle Shoals High School (MSHS) is the sole public secondary education institution in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. MSHS has been awarded the Blue Ribbon Lighthouse Award for Excellence.
The W. C. Handy Jazz All-Stars is a group of jazz musicians who play annually at the W. C. Handy Music Festival in Florence, Alabama. During the last week of July each year, these musicians travel from all over the United States to gather in Florence and perform in various combinations. In addition to performing jazz, members of the W. C. Handy Jazz All-Stars serve as the resident faculty of the W. C. Handy Jazz Camp, also teaching the "A B Cs of Jazz, Blues and Beyond".
Dixieland jazz, also referred to as traditional jazz, hot jazz, or simply Dixieland, is a style of jazz based on the music that developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century. The 1917 recordings by the Original Dixieland Jass Band, fostered awareness of this new style of music.
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.