8/23/2024
Education and Outreach
Smith Center staffers, Jazz Outreach Initiative musicians, students and teachers at McWilliams Elementary School for a Buzzin’ in Brass event.
Listening to Gary Cordell speak about jazz music, one can practically hear instruments coming together to form a whole far greater than the sum of its parts.
“You have to work democratically inside a jazz band – everybody has to work for the music to work,” explains Cordell, co-founder and vice president of education and programming for the Jazz Outreach Initiative. “You're supporting everybody else, and then they can take a back seat and let you shine.”
Cordell, a trumpet player from Alabama, came to Las Vegas to enroll in UNLV’s famed jazz program, and fortunately for Southern Nevada’s jazz community, he has remained here since. About a decade ago, he and longtime friend Kenny Rampton – a fellow trumpeter and a member of the world-renowned Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra – brainstormed an idea for a vessel that could help spread jazz through the community, particularly among young people.
“We both have benefited so much from music education and from music in general, and we were at a point in our lives where we wanted to give back,” Cordell says. “Music brings passion and dedication to students, and jazz is unique in that it teaches students how to work to support each other.”
The concept became reality in 2017, when Cordell, Rampton and another longtime friend, Donny Thompson, launched Jazz Outreach Initiative. Its mission statement: “to connect the language of music to the language of life through education, outreach and performances.”
Through the years, Jazz Outreach Initiative has added specialized programs to achieve that mission – Cordell says the number is up to 12 now – while the organization’s performing groups have played at locations across the Las Vegas Valley.
Jazz Outreach Initiative’s Gary Cordell (left) and Kenny Rampton
(Photo courtesy Gary Cordell)
That includes school visits. In conjunction with The Smith Center’s education and outreach department, Jazz Outreach Initiative has conducted a series of in-school performances all over town. “We usually have six to eight performances a semester with The Smith Center,” Cordell says. “We love going out to the schools and presenting this program, and The Smith Center has just been fantastic with their support.”
For the first time, on November 13, Jazz Outreach Initiative’s Vegas Jazz Orchestra – a professional, 18-piece big band comprising some of the area’s most acclaimed jazz figures – will perform two student matinees inside The Smith Center’s majestic Reynolds Hall. Those will be preceded by a public sensory-inclusive concert by the group one night earlier in the same room. The title for those shows: “What Is Jazz?”
“We’re going to present, on license from Jazz at Lincoln Center, a jazz concert for young people,” Cordell says. “We've been working a long time on that, and I'm really excited to see that take shape.”
The Vegas Jazz Orchestra also has a ticketed show scheduled for October 9 inside Myron’s at The Smith Center, focused on the music of longtime Las Vegas resident Joe Williams, a beloved jazz vocalist who died in 1999 at age 80. Local favorites Michelle Johnson and Naomi Mauro are among the guests scheduled to take part in that celebration.
“Not only was Joe Williams the world-renowned singer that everybody saw, but he was also instrumental in music education, so we wanted to give a tribute to him and all that he has done,” Cordell says.
Cordell thanks Jazz Outreach Initiative’s “fantastic” board and the group’s tireless volunteers, along with Candy Schneider, Melanie Jupp and the rest of The Smith Center’s education and outreach department, which he says “has taken our K-5 program, Buzzin’ in Brass, and made it just wonderful.”
And then Cordell is back to talking about jazz itself – and making everyone around him want to hear more of it.
“When you see a fantastic piece of art or you read a life-changing book, those take time. But with jazz, within two or three minutes, you can hear someone create a piece of art that can affect you and touch you on a lot of levels. And to watch and hear someone do that affects me in such a way that it profoundly changes me,” he says.
“Sometimes I hear something, I hear a phrase that just reaches out to me, and I'll be singing it for days afterwards. Then you chase that feeling, and not only do you want that feeling for yourself, but you want to share that feeling. And that lifts everyone up.”
To learn more about Jazz Outreach Initiative, visit jazzoutreachinitiative.org.