You Do ‘You’ at Summer Jazz Camp

By Frank Alkyer I Feb. 8, 2024

Looking toward the city side of learning, campers at the Summer Jazz Workshop of Fordham College at Lincoln Center performed in New York’s Times Square.
(Photo: Courtesy Fordham College)

Summertime, and the living is … improvised! When the weather heats up and the days get longer, there’s no shortage of options out there for places where that improvisation, and learning, can happen. Whether you’re an upstart 10-year-old piano player looking for your first jazz camp experience or an 45-year-old plumber, doctor or teacher moonlighting as a trombonist, the jazz world is brimming with opportunities to improve your chops and have some fun away from home.

Maybe you want to see Sweden … Maine, that is, where Camp Encore/Coda takes place in rural New England. Staying on the East Coast, looking for something intimate? The Hudson Jazz Workshop in the Catskills takes just 10 students at a time and works hard to offer that personal touch, complete with a chef on staff. And over in Killington, Vermont, a locale best known for winter skiing, Jazz in the Mountains delivers a killer setting for adults to sharpen their jazz skills.

If you’re thinking, “Rural is nice, but I’m a city kind of cat,” maybe you head down South to the New Orleans Trad Jazz Camp to learn the original stuff in the birthplace of jazz. Or maybe it’s off to New York, that mecca of the music, for immersive experiences like the Summer Jazz Workshop by Fordham College at Lincoln Center or Manhattan School of Music’s MSM Summer.

Out West, students can really stretch the boundaries of the music at the Not Just Jazz Ensemble at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle or take advantage of one of a variety of camps offered by the Stanford Jazz Workshop.

And if you’re looking to go very far in jazz — as in far away — maybe Joshua Breakstone’s Jazz Guitar Dream Experience in Kyoto, Japan, is the place for you.

Prefer something with more of a Latin, as in Cubano, feel? KoSA’s Cuba Workshop & Festival in Havana may be the exotic hang you desire.

We’re just scratching the surface here, but the fact is that the world is your jazz oyster.

To find the camp that’s right for you, just check out our complete camp-guide listings link below. Inside this special guide, you will find the dates, rates, teaching staffs and more for more than 180 camps around the globe!

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE GUIDE! DB