Thousands of North Carolina Public School Students to Participate in "Jazz in America" Education Programs

Washington, DC (PRWEB) October 6, 2006

With generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, a non-profit education organization, will introduce its Jazz in America: The National Jazz Curriculum to thousands of public school students in North Carolina during the week of October 9-13. Jazz in America (http://www.jazzinamerica.org) is the Institutes Internet-based jazz curriculum that is being made available to all 5th, 8th, and 11th grade public school students in the United States. Designed to be a regular part of each schools social studies or American history classes, Jazz in America is the first jazz curriculum to use state-of-the-art Internet technology that is offered free of charge on a national basis.

Throughout the week-long visit to North Carolina public schools, the Institute will present a series of jazz assembly programs, jazz band clinics, and vocal master classes. Each assembly program will feature a five-piece jazz combo led by internationally renowned saxophonist Bobby Watson, a presentation called What is Jazz? by Dr. J.B. Dyas, and a question-and-answer session with students. In addition, jazz drummer Thelonious Monk, Jr., Chairman of the Institutes Board of Trustees and son of the legendary jazz pianist and composer, will make remarks about jazz and its role as Americas greatest musical contribution to the world.

Members of the press are invited to attend any of the following events:

MONDAY OCTOBER 9: ROCKY MOUNT

Rocky Mount High School, 308 South Tillery Street

10:00-11:00am: Assembly Program for 600 students in auditorium

TUESDAY OCTOBER 10 (Birthday of Thelonious Monk): RALEIGH

Knightdale High School, 100 Bryan Chalk Lane

8:30-9:30am - Jazz band clinic in Room 1306

8:30-9:30am - Vocal master class in Room 1330

9:45-10:45am - Assembly Program for 900 students in auditorium

Ligon Middle School, 706 E. Lenoir Street

12:00-1:00pm - Jazz band clinic in Room 6116

12:00-1:00pm - Vocal master class in Room 6114

1:15-2:15pm - Assembly Program for 900 students in auditorium

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 11: DURHAM

Hillside High School, 3727 Fayetteville Street

9:00-10:00am - Assembly program for 300 students in auditorium

THURSDAY OCTOBER 12: CHARLOTTE

Harding University High School, 2001 Alleghany Street

10:30-11:30am - Jazz band clinic

10:30-11:30am - Vocal master class

Myers Park High School, 2400 Colony Road

1:00-2:00pm - Assembly Program for 300 students in auditorium

FRIDAY OCTOBER 13: CHARLOTTE

Northwest School of the Arts, 1415 Beatties Ford Road

9:00-10:00am - Assembly Program for 300 students

10:30-11:30am - Jazz band clinic

ABOUT THE CURRICULUM

The Jazz in America curriculum (http://www.jazzinamerica.org) presents an introduction to jazz as it evolved in America and spread throughout the world. It defines the characteristics of jazz, explains how to listen to the music, details the many styles of jazz, and highlights some of the musicians who have advanced the art form. The curriculum also focuses on the development of jazz in America by highlighting the major cities that influenced the music. Further, each lesson plan explores the social, economic, and political contexts within which jazz evolved. In addition to the lesson plans, the curriculum website includes a teachers manual, assessments, and a comprehensive Jazz Resource Library.

ABOUT THE MUSICIANS

The tour will be headlined by internationally renowned saxophonist and recording artist Bobby Watson (http://www.bobbywatson.com), who rose to prominence as a member of Art Blakeys Jazz Messengers, and will feature vocalist Lisa Henry, a winner of the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Vocals Competition. The members of the rhythm section are Richard Johnson, piano; Derek Nievergelt, bass; and Otis Brown III, drums. Brown attended the Thelonious Monk Institute Jazz Colony in Aspen, Colorado in the summer of 1999. Nievergelt and Johnson are 1999 graduates of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance, a specialized graduate level college program that enables the worlds most gifted young musicians to study tuition-free with the greatest living jazz legends including Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Clark Terry.

ABOUT THE THELONIOUS MONK INSTITUTE OF JAZZ

The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz (http://www.monkinstitute.org) is a non-profit education organization established in memory of Thelonious Monk, the legendary jazz pianist and composer. Monk believed the best way to learn jazz was from a master of the music. The Institute follows that same philosophy by bringing together the greatest living jazz musicians to teach and inspire young people. The Institute offers the most promising young musicians college level training by America's jazz masters and presents public school-based jazz education programs for people around the world. Helping to fill the tremendous void in arts education left by severe budget cuts in public school funding, the Institutes education programs are provided free to the public and use jazz as the medium to encourage imaginative thinking, creativity, a positive self-image, and respect for ones own and others' cultural heritage.

ABOUT THELONIOUS MONK

Thelonious Sphere Monk (1917-1982) is recognized as one of the most influential figures in the history of jazz. He was one of the architects of bebop and his impact as a composer and pianist has had a profound influence on every genre of music.

Monk was born on October 10, 1917, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. His parents, Barbara Batts and Thelonious Monk, later moved the family to New York City. Monk began piano lessons as a young child and by the age of 13 he had won the weekly amateur contest at the Apollo Theater so many times that he was barred from entering. At the age of 19, Monk joined the house band at Minton's Playhouse in Harlem, where along with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and a handful of other players, he developed the style of jazz that came to be known as bebop. Monk's compositions, among them "Round Midnight," were the canvasses over which these legendary soloists expressed their musical ideas.

In 1947, Monk made his first recordings as a leader for Blue Note. These albums are some of the earliest documents of his unique compositional and improvisational style, both of which employed unusual repetition of phrases, an offbeat use of space, and joyfully dissonant sounds. That same year, he married his long-time love Nellie Smith and later had two children, Thelonious, Jr. and Barbara (1954-1984). In the decade that followed, Monk played on recordings with Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and Sonny Rollins and recorded as a leader for Prestige Records and later for Riverside Records. Brilliant Corners and Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane were two of the albums from this period that brought Monk international attention as a pianist and composer.

In 1957, the Thelonious Monk Quartet, which included John Coltrane, began a regular gig at the Five Spot. The group's performances were hugely successful and received the highest critical praise. Over the next few years, Monk toured the United States and Europe and made some of his most influential recordings. In 1964, Thelonious Monk appeared on the cover of Time magazine, an honor that has been bestowed on only three other jazz musicians. By this time, Monk was a favorite at jazz festivals around the world, where he performed with his quartet, which included long-time associate Charlie Rouse. In the early '70s he discontinued touring and recording and appeared only on rare occasions at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall and the Newport Jazz Festival.

Thelonious S

Bellarmine Museum of Art Opens to the Public at Fairfield University October 25

Fairfield, CT (Vocus) October 1, 2010

With the long-awaited public opening of the Bellarmine Museum of Art scheduled for October 25, Fairfield University introduces a permanent sanctuary for its growing art collection and future exhibitions. Museum hours will be Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., while the University is in session.

The museum, built at a cost of $ 3.2 million, will be a dynamic new center of learning for all of its constituencies, including students of all ages and stages, art professionals and members of the general public. The Bellarmine also maintains collegial ties with the larger museum community, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art/the Cloisters Museum and the Acropolis Museum in Athens. The loans and gifts that these, and other, institutions have made to the Museum have enhanced its core permanent collection, facilitating a remarkable breadth of display for a museum of the Bellarmine's size. It is expected that this architectural gem, which comprises three galleries and an ancillary corridor, will become both a cultural destination and an invaluable resource for art-loving residents and visitors in the area.

The month of October begins a whirlwind of receptions and campus events to celebrate the museums opening. There will be a private, special reception on Thursday, Oct. 14 to which members of the art community, press and special friends of the University have been invited. On Monday, Oct. 25 at 10 a.m., the Bellarmine Museum of Art will open its doors to the public.

Jill Deupi, J.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of art history in Fairfields Department of Visual and Performing art and director of the Bellarmine Museum of Art, has expansive educational plans for the museum. There is no doubt that the Bellarmine Museum will substantially enhance the art history program and all that it has to offer. With the works of art located in one central location that features an onsite multi-media smART classroom, the process of hands-on learning will rise to a new level.

Deupi is currently working on stratagems that include docents, outreach and K-12 arts education encompassing a wide range of activities. Her colleague in this endeavor is New Canaan resident and docent at the Yale Center for British Art Kathleen Leitao, whose son Daniel is a junior at Fairfield. Among their plans is the reservation of one Saturday each month for family art-based activities.

Jim Childress, FAIA and Stephen Holmes, AIA of Centerbrook Architects and Planners of Centerbrook, Conn. transformed a utilitarian storage area into an elegant yet functional space. Childress said that the thick concrete walls in the catacomb-like basement of the original mansion conveyed a sense of mystery. If you step through the small basement door of the lobby, you discover a place of refuge away from the world, he said. The gallery form we designed was inspired by an almost complete cruciform plan that we discovered in the basement.

The main gallery, The Frank and Clara Meditz Gallery, named in honor of the parents of the lead donor to the project, University Trustee John Meditz 70, evokes an early Christian basilica in plan and will showcase ten paintings from the Italian Renaissance and Baroque periods works that were gifted to the University by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation via Bridgeports Discovery Museum.

In one smaller side gallery highlights from the University's collection of plaster casts after exemplary works from ancient Rome and Greece, including eight recently donated to the University by the Acropolis Museum in Athens, will be displayed. The corridor adjacent to the Meditz gallery will showcase plaster casts of significant pieces from the Parthenon (also Athens). The Gifts from Athens: New Plaster Casts from The Acropolis Museum and Photographs by Socratis Mavrommatis exhibition will open Nov. 2 and continue through Dec. 17.

In addition to historic plaster casts, the museum houses a range of non-Western art objects (including pre-Columbian vessels, 19th-century South East Asian sculptures and African masks), and is fortunate enough to hold objects from the late Antique, Celtic, Medieval and Romanesque periods on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art/the Cloisters Museum.

Leitao, who is volunteering her time and expertise in planning for museum education, saw an opportunity in the Bellarmine Museum to work with schools to help them use our collection as part of their curriculum, particularly the casts of ancient Greek sculptures. She said: There is a lot of focus in museum education today on finding ways to bring art into the classroom to support curriculum goals rather than have the museum be primarily a field trip.

Deupi and Leitao are working together to find ways to build connections between the museum and, as Leitao says, the Universitys students as well as for local schools and the community. The physical space intrigues her and she is also interested in how the intimate nature of this museum and its collection will allow students and community members to become familiar over multiple visits with pieces in the collection in a way that they would not typically experience in a large museum.

The Bellarmine Museum of Art has been, and continues to be, truly a collaborative venture. First, came the vision from faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences, then the buy-in from administrators who understood its fit within the Jesuit universitys mission and strategic plan and commenced raising funds to make it possible. In addition to Meditz, other donors to the project include The Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the Charles and Mabel P. Jost Foundation. Fundraising for the project and the endowment of the museum remains ongoing. The National Endowment for the Humanities has also provided generous support through an award of a $ 500,000 four-to-one challenge grant mandating that the University raise $ 2 million by 2013 to ensure receipt of the NEH challenge. Individuals and representatives of corporations and foundations interested in partnering with the University in supporting the museum are encouraged to contact Geri Derbyshire, director of major gifts at gderbyshire@fairfield.edu.

Photo caption: The Bellarmine Museum of Art, Fairfield University

Photo credit: Jean Santopatre/Fairfield University

Photo caption: PAOLO DE MATTEIS (Italian, 1662-1728) Andromeda and Perseus, c. 1710; The Bellarmine Museum of Art at Fairfield University; Samuel H. Kress Collection via the Discovery Museum (Bridgeport, Conn.)

Vol. 43, No. 61

Fairfield University offers its students and the regional community a wide array of opportunities to enjoy the arts and enrich their lives through study, performance, appreciation, and thought. The annual Arts & Minds season of events at Fairfield provides an outstanding array of cultural and intellectual events that include the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts season, the popular Open VISIONS Forum lecture series, professional and student performances, art exhibits, special lectures, and a myriad of other lifelong learning opportunities. For further information check http://www.fairfield.edu/arts.

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