12/13/2024
Education and Outreach
Clint Holmes and the Jazz Vegas Orchestra
Swing. The blues. Improvisation. We know what the terms mean individually, but did you know they’re considered the three fundamentals of jazz music?
More than 2,000 students – from grades 5 through 12 at 30 area schools – learned that and much more about one of the foremost American musical art forms, on a recent visit to The Smith Center for the Performing Arts.
“Jazz music teaches and encourages you to find your own voice and to respect and nurture the unique voices of others,” Gary Cordell, co-founder of the Jazz Outreach Initiative, explained to the students during a pair of matinee shows in Reynolds Hall.
“When we are free to be ourselves together – swinging, feeling the blues, improvising – that is the magic of jazz, and jazz can bring us all together. As you can see, it brought us all here today.”
Cordell and Channel 8 personality Nate Tannenbaum served as co-hosts for the informative and interesting performances, which featured music from the all-star Jazz Vegas Orchestra and iconic Vegas vocalist Clint Holmes.
The group led the audience on a journey through jazz’s New Orleans roots, its traditional instruments and the role of each one, the importance of listening and playing with feeling and more. And it was all presented in an interactive way that kept the roomful of young people engaged and involved.
For example, Cordell got the students to “build a drum” by dividing the room in parts, with each group counting off at different intervals and then weaving it all together.
Three Jazz Vegas Orchestra musicians were called upon to demonstrate the way they can use their instruments to produce an expression of sadness, with each first singing and then playing sorrowful sounds on their trumpet, saxophone and trombone.
The students learned the lyrics to traditional gospel song “This Little Light of Mine” and then harmonized with Holmes while the band played behind them.
The Orchestra even invited several students up onstage to dance along at one point, the way folks do during jazz’s New Orleans “second line” parades.
And before the students headed back to school, Tannenbaum gave them a quick refresher on everything they’d learned, about the trombone’s slide, the walking bass, call and response and so much more.
Programs like this are made possible by The Smith Center’s generous Members, whose donations help fund education and outreach opportunities for students throughout Southern Nevada.