Education Vision Statement

Outreach, Education and Community Programs

The CJBS outreach, education and community programs are designed to inspire a passion for the currency and immediacy of the living art of improvised music. We support performance practices that broaden the institutionalized study of jazz by connecting both musicians and listeners with the creative tradition of experimentation that is the legacy of the music. Never losing sight of the importance of intermingling creativity with craft, CJBS generates opportunities for mentoring relationships to develop and evolve between novice, emerging and seasoned artists, and listeners. We encourage and facilitate programs that combine inventiveness, innovation, spontaneity and musical risk-taking with the sheer pleasures of learning, listening and playing. Astutely aware that jazz and improvised musics have never existed in a vacuum apart from the communities they serve, CJBS welcomes diversity in musical perspectives. We endeavor to design programs that promote dialogue between and within diverse communities through the sharing of sounds and ideas. CJBS recognizes that improvisational practices cross borders of all kinds - borders of culture, gender, race, class, generation, sound, style - and we support the polyphony of voices that resonate in our community.