What's Current

The Return of the 5,000-lb. Man....

    

Bright Moments with Rahsaan Roland Kirk will descend on 100+ campuses in the Austin, Del Valle, Manor, Round Rock, and Eanes ISD's between September 2008 and May 2009.  See the Teacher's Guide below for a sneak peek.

AJW Birthday Celebration

    

Our 15th Birthday will be celebrated in style at a special party featuring live music from AJW musicians and their young proteges!  Coming in late September, details soon.

    

AJW in the Community 

    

Part of our mission is to collaborate with other nonprofit groups on public events.

    

The Austin Jazz Workshop offers reduced rates to nonprofit agencies in the Austin area for your benefits, fundraisers, and special events.  It's cheaper than you think to have top professionals provide live music for your next event!  Contact us for a promo pack and rate sheet at (512) 899-2262.

    

We have performed events for Meals on Wheels, Center for Child Protection, SafePlace, The Long Center for the Performing Arts, Breast Cancer Resource Center, ARC of the Capitol Area, and many others. 

Upcoming events include:

9/16/08  Applied Materials dinner

9/17/08  Center for Child Protection Grand Opening

9/25/08  Greenlights for Nonprofit Success Conference

10/15/08  ARC of the Capitol Area Benefit Art Auction

Your event could be next!

Teacher's Guide for Bright Moments with Rahsaan Roland Kirk

 

The Austin Jazz Workshop's mission is to educate and perform for students in central Texas public schools in order to encourage their participation in band, orchestra, and choir programs; to uphold and promote the American jazz tradition; and to enhance quality of life through live performances employing area musicians and collaborations with nonprofit organizations in central Texas.

 

This year's season is dedicated to Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the African-American wind player who invented a whole new style of breathing and playing his many instruments. In spite of his blindness at age two and his early death at forty-one, Kirk led a one-man revolution in jazz.

At the conclusion of the workshop, your students will be familiar with the vocabulary terms swing, improvisation, and circular breathing . Since Kirk was such a larger-than-life figure, this year’s workshops will make use of DVD archival footage of the man in action. For this reason, please make sure the clinician has access to a DVD player with a functioning remote control.

You will be contacted by your workshop clinician about two weeks prior to your scheduled assembly. Ideally, workshops should take place during the assembly week. They are aimed at grade levels three and higher, with a budget of three class periods per campus . Classes may be combined, but a maximum of 50 students in the room at one time is preferred. Workshops are designed to take place in the music classroom. They are intended as an opportunity for some of your students to get acquainted with jazz concepts and history before the full group performs on your campus. Students are also given the opportunity for some Q&A with the clinician.

Materials needed for the workshop : TV/DVD player, CD player, overhead projector.

Each workshop will contain the following sections (not necessarily in this order):

Perception: clinician will demonstrate creative nature of music artistry with his/her instrument.

Vocabulary: Swing, Improvisation , Circular Breathing.

Historical/Cultural Heritage: How Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s playing and compositional style encompassed the entire scope of jazz history, from Dixieland through swing and bebop and into the modern era.

Question/Answer session . We will leave some time at the end for questions.

Suggested Discography

Despite his short life, Kirk recorded quite a few titles. Here is a representative sampling.

 The Inflated Tear. Atlantic Masters, 1968.

Rip, Rig, and Panic. EmArcy/Polygram, 1980.

Kirkatron/Boogie Woogie String Along for Real. Collectibles/Warner Brothers, 2005.

We Free Kings. Verve/Polygram, 1961.

Domino. Verve/Mercury, 2000.

Dog Years in the Fourth Ring. 32 Jazz, 1997.

 

View an Audio Slideshow of the AJW in action

Put together by our friends at the Austin American-Statesman.

Audio slideshow: Austin Jazz Workshop, 01.20.07

"I Live Here, I Give Here" campaign:

Follow this link to find out more about an exciting program to raise awareness about local nonprofit groups: