Arts Activities Support

Quantitative: We had 45 students attend and total concert attendance for the four concerts over 200 persons. Qualitative: Students improved and some parents were emotionally moved by just how good the students sounded performing on their own. 45 students attended. We had a goal of 48 and though we didn't reach that goal we actually offered more sessions which featured smaller groups of 5 or 6 each (instead of 8 which is full capacity). More guest faculty taught which exposed the students to different approaches to jazz. We committed to having all our concerts at Icehouse as the Dakota Jazz Club became to hard to schedule. The change was a good thing as different from the Dakota Icehouse offered a full menu and promoted the concerts in its publicity, something the Dakota never did. Also this summer we spaced out the workshops to have sessions in June, July, and August. This worked well and schedule allowing, we will replicate a similar offering for 2017. What we would do differently would be to begin recruiting key instrumentalists, particularly bassists, early in the Spring. For some ensembles there was no student bassist and so a guest faculty had to function in that role. It was good in that the students had a second teacher in the room but having a student bassist would be preferable. We did reach our intended community of students interested in learning more about jazz improvisation. Our outreach efforts did involve more students of color and girls- to subgroups we are most interested in helping discover jazz. Recruitment for these group was most effective when instead of classroom visits we inquired from our jazz peers if they knew of an up and coming young player who would be interested in the workshop. Next year we need to go to churches with music programs and let them know we have an opportunity for their young players.