Middle School Jazz Invitational

On February 15th, the Community High Jazz Program put on a masterclass sponsored by the Sandy Maconochie Tribute Fund. Sandy Maconochie was a music teacher in the Ann Arbor Public Schools and spent most of her teaching years at Tappan Middle School. She retired in 2010. The musicians performing included two Tappan Middle School graduates: Ingrid Racine on trumpet and Ben Jansson on saxophone. The former AAPS students were accompanied on the stage by other local artists: Duncan McMillian on Piano, Kurt Krahnke on Bass, and Bill Higgins on drums.

The event was kicked off with a performance by the jazz professionals. The audience of high school and middle school musicians was then escorted to specific rooms based on the instrument they played for a small master class. A jam session followed the class. Middle school jazz players and advanced high school jazz players performed and soloed on the same stage as the professionals watched and tweaked their performances.

“The main purpose is to bring together the jazz professionals and the young musicians and just open their eyes, their hearts, and their souls to jazz,” said Maconochie. “I did it many times at Tappan [Middle School] and it was always different and there was always this one student that would come up to me that I never thought it would make a difference to them and they would come up and say ‘That was great, let’s do it again!’…It’s always worth it. I don’t know how many kids in here turned on to jazz just from doing this.”

After seeing the success of this masterclass, Maconochie is hoping to organize another concert for the fall of 2011. She hopes this masterclass and concert will become an annual event to help students learn and get excited about jazz from professional musicians.