N.O. Teen Program Expands, Announces Auditions

By I Sep. 5, 2007

The Don Jamison Heritage School of Music, a free after-school program with campuses throughout New Orleans, has expanded and will hold auditions next week for 11- to 18-year-old students.

The school was started in 1990 by the renowned saxophonist Edward “Kidd” Jordan, who ran it at Southern University at New Orleans until Hurricane Katrina. Last September, Jordan restarted the program and moved it to Lusher High School, where it attracted more than 40 students from throughout the area in its first semester of post-Katrina operation.

In January, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation, Inc., which funds the school, expanded to program to include campuses at McDonough 35 High School and Dillard University.

Now, with the addition of campuses at Behrman Elementary and Joseph A. Craig Elementary School, the foundation is increasing the number of campuses from three to five. (The McDonough 35 and Craig campuses are open only to students of those schools; the others are open to the entire community.)

Auditions will be held:

• Sept. 13, at 3:30 p.m., at Lusher High School (5624 Freret St.)

• Sept. 15, at 9 a.m., at Martin Behrman Charter Elementary School (715 Opelousas Ave. in Algiers Point)

• Sept. 15, at 9 a.m., in the Cook Fine Arts Center at Dillard University (2601 Gentilly Blvd.)

Instruction will be in brass, woodwinds, piano, bass, drums and voice. Beginners and intermediate-level students are being directed to the Lusher and Behrman campuses; the Dillard campus will cater to more advanced students, who will receive instruction in composing and arranging, computer programs for music notation and music business.

Beginners auditioning for the Lusher and Behrman campuses should have completed at least some instruction on their instruments. They should be able to play a major and minor scale, identify notes on a staff and play at least one song. Students should own their own instruments and should bring them to the auditions.

More advanced students auditioning for the Dillard campus should be prepared to:

• Perform a song (preferably a jazz standard) that demonstrates their full range of ability

• Demonstrate an ability to improvise over a blues form in the keys of F and B flat

• Play chromatic scales (F major and B flat major) over the entire length of their instrument

• Sight-read an unfamiliar jazz composition

• For pianists and bassists, demonstrate a fundamental ability to read chord changes

• For drummers, demonstrate an ability to play “straight-ahead jazz time” (swing and shuffle beats) at different tempos