Students to take on jazz legacy

“Kids like to do.”

Kathy Heise, art teacher at Fairview Elementary said young students like to learn hands-on.

Pair this method with the music of Indiana’s jazz greats, and the result is The Jazz Legacy of Indiana project, a collaborative project in which elementary students put knowledge of Indiana’s Jazz legacy to practice.

Fifth and sixth graders of Fairview and University Elementary will be performing Thursday to mark the completion of this musical endeavor.

The performance will be at 6 p.m. in the Fairview Elementary Auditorium.

The project was initiated by Monika Herzig, a touring jazz artist and faculty member for the Arts Management program at SPEA.  

She said she wanted to have the project as part of ArtsWeek 2011 to inform the students of the rich jazz legacy that Indiana possesses.  

“The artists I chose kind of portray a walk through history of jazz in Indiana,” Herzig said.

Hoagy Carmichael represented the first wave of jazz at the turn of the century for the
students, Herzig said, while May Aufderheide was a female presence and the Deacon Hampton Family Band showed the aspect of social ties within the genre.

Through studying these and many more musicians, the students gained the knowledge about jazz to create their own pieces.

Maggie Olivo, art teacher at University Elementary, said when it came to the creation of music, there was a diverse reaction among the students.

She said some were more excited because they already played an instrument, while others were intimidated by the prospect of playing for the first time.

However, as the project progressed, the faint of heart grew more confident.

“When they know their place, when they realize they’re going to perform and they’ve completed the lyrics, they all had a sense of pride,” Olivo said.

Heise’s students also became connected with their musical compositions, something she said she thinks lent to the success of the project.

“Inside of jazz music you can be creative, put some of yourself into it. This allows the students to put things together in a new way and connect more with what they’re learning,” Heise said.

Heise, Olivo and Herzig said they agreed that there was one standout part of the project to which the students really reacted well.

The classroom was visited by a musician whom Herzing called the only living link from that great era in Indiana Jazz: David Baker, chairman of the Department of Jazz Studies at the Jacob’s School of Music.

On Thursday, students will perform pieces they created in the project. Students will also share reflections on the project, which will be both sung and read.

Herzig said she thought the project was a success and that it fostered important values surrounding both music and education.

“It inspired a willingness to create and ability to work together and gave them the freedom to step out and create something and perform for each other,”
Herzig said.