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Longtime jazz evangelists reach out to mid-state youth

Erin Hanlon for WMOT

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (HANLON)  --  The future of Middle Tennessee jazz is in good hands. A mid-state couple have taken on the challenge of introducing each new generation of musicians to jazz in the capital of Country Music.

The Nashville Jazz Workshop was founded in 1998 by Lori Mechem and her husband Roger Spencer. They started with just a handful of students, but have now grown to nearly 100 during their 6-week summer program. The program is based on a workshop model due to their dissatisfaction with traditional academic jazz education.  Their workshop is based on an apprentice approach. 

“What we want to do is to have our students be involved in their ensembles with their teachers," Mechem said.  "In the old days, that’s how it worked. The young ones would be on stage with the older ones, and that’s how we would learn.”

There are no prerequisites to join, however, due to the fast-paced environment instructor Evan Cobb said students should at least have an interest in jazz if they don’t have prior musical training.

“We throw information at them at a pretty high rate and we ask the students not only to play difficult music and learn it over the course of this week, but they are also all improvising on the tunes. So they are all working on their own solos and working on developing their voice, and better familiarity with their instruments,” Cobb said.

The NJW also offers discussion-based classes for the non-musician.These classes include history, styles, and analysis.

“We give them a lot of stuff not just to learn today, but to take with them over the course of the summer, into the school year, take with them to their private lessons teachers," Cobb said.  "We are giving them a little bit of medial pursuit but also long term pursuit.”

The Nashville Jazz Workshop receives grants from the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee. This helps provide scholarship opportunities for students in need of financial assistance at the Jazz Workshop. Seventeen-year-old saxophonist Gabriel Collins of Franklin is fortunate enough to be in the scholarship program.

“I love everything about playing and I really want to continue playing the rest of my life. I love playing, everything about it,” Collins said.

Collin’s most valuable lesson in his 3-years at the workshop is watching the instructors listen before they play. 

“I’ve always been in awe of that fact. It seems like they can play all these immaculate lines in their solos, but they are really listening everything around them before they think about playing,” he said.

Seventeen-year old trombone player Daisy Kludt of Watertown said she’s learned more about music in her first summer here, than she has in all her years in school.

The Nashville Jazz Workshop is a non-profit organization supporting jazz musicians, jazz fans, and the jazz community. The NJW has become, in the words of one student, Nashville's "community center for jazz."