The Bak Middle School for the Arts Jazz Band.By Bill Meredith
Until recently, you weren’t likely to hear mention of the local Bak Middle School of the Arts and the Juilliard School in New York City within the same sentence.
Starting Monday, that will officially change when Juilliard’s world-class faculty and graduate students come to Bak to educate 81 students, ages 12-18, in one of its series of weeklong Summer Jazz Workshops 2011. The series commemorates the 10th anniversary of Juilliard’s Institute for Jazz Studies, and Bak was one of only six schools selected worldwide for participation.
Bak’s profile as a free magnet arts school has risen gradually at the site of the former North Shore High School, located on Echo Lake Drive just south of the old jai alai fronton in West Palm Beach. That rise has been more pronounced since Palm Beacher Dora Bak donated $1.5 million in the name of her late husband, Dr. Richard Bak, and gave the Palm Beach Middle School of the Arts a new name in 2002.
The school offers conservatory-level arts programs in band, keyboard, strings, vocal music, dance, visual arts, theater and communications to more than 1,350 Palm Beach County children in grades 6-8. Many graduates go on to attend high school at the affiliated Dreyfoos School of the Arts, formerly Palm Beach and Twin Lakes high schools and located near the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach.
But Juilliard? It was founded in 1905 as the Institute of Musical Art, and became the Juilliard School of Music in 1926 when the institute merged with the Juilliard Graduate School. That musical institution had been founded two years earlier, through a bequest in the will of wealthy textile merchant Augustus Juilliard. When dance and drama were introduced into the curriculum in the 1950s and 1960s, its name was shortened to the Juilliard School.
Juilliard has since produced award-winning dancers, choreographers, authors and actors (those include Kevin Spacey, Laura Linney, Kevin Kline, Robin Williams, Ving Rhames and William Hurt). Alumni have collectively won more than 62 Tony Awards, 47 Emmys, 24 Oscars and 16 Pulitzer Prizes.
Yet music is still what the school is best-known for, a fact underscored by more than 105 collective Grammy Awards. Juilliard’s classical products include cellist Yo-Yo Ma, soprano Renee Fleming, and violin virtuoso and current faculty member Itzhak Perlman.
Jazz musicians benefited from Juilliard lessons long before the school established its Institute for Jazz Studies, as evidenced by a list of students that includes Miles Davis, Chick Corea, Wynton Marsalis, Nina Simone, Tito Puente, Christian McBride and Michel Camilo. Current jazz faculty members include former Davis bassist Ron Carter, piano icon Kenny Barron, heralded trombonist Steve Turre, and bandleader and noted session drummer Carl Allen, the artistic director for Juilliard’s jazz program.
Among Juilliard’s Summer Jazz Workshops, Bak joins only the Georgia Academy for the Blind in Macon (where the workshops are held simultaneously with Bak’s), North Atlanta High School (June 20-24), the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine (June 27-July 1), Trinity College at the University of Melbourne in Australia (July 3-9) and Snow College in Ephraim, Utah (July 10-16).
Cleve Maloon, Bak’s director of bands, facilitated the partnership with Juilliard through his connections – and his diligence.
Cleve Maloon and the Bak Middle School Jazz Band. “I first contacted Juilliard about a year ago, because I knew they were coming as far south as Atlanta,” says the 45-year-old Maloon. “So I talked to Laurie Carter, executive director of Juilliard’s jazz program, and told her that we had the facilities, and the reputation for excellence, to do summer jazz workshops here, too. A lot of other things had to happen to make it all possible, including major corporate sponsorship by Jon Smith Subs and others. And a couple of area music stores, Chafin Musicenter and Music Man, offered scholarships.”
Born on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, Maloon is a trombonist who once opened for Bob Marley. He’s also played with other reggae icons like Steel Pulse and Third World, as well as in classical orchestras and jazz big bands. And it didn’t hurt his case that he had a friend and fellow Virgin Islands native who was teaching jazz saxophone at Juilliard.
“My first call was to Ron Blake,” Maloon says, “who’s a saxophonist and boyhood friend. He comes down here every year to perform with our jazz band, and he’ll be here to teach during the week.”
Allen, the Juilliard Institute for Jazz Studies’ artistic director since 2008, said Blake brought the idea to him and Carter.
“And here we are,” he said. “One of the things we look for is geographic areas that express an interest. There are hot spots around the country for music and jazz education, and the area between Jacksonville and Miami is one of them. So it’s not about why we’re going to a middle school, because Cleve Maloon and Bak have a great program there. It’s about developing relationships, and subsequently the next generation of jazz musicians.”
The 50-year-old Allen has been part of the Juilliard faculty since 2001. A Milwaukee native, the drummer studied classical music at the University of Wisconsin and jazz at William Paterson University in New Jersey, has several recordings as a bandleader, and has worked with Freddie Hubbard, Branford Marsalis, James Moody, Dewey Redman, Pharaoh Sanders, Lena Horne and Sammy Davis Jr.
Drummer Carl Allen.“This will be our fourth year at North Atlanta High School,” Allen says, “our seventh at Snow College in Utah, and our first at Bak. It’ll also be our third year at the Georgia Academy for the Blind, but also our first at the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind. There’s so much talent at schools like those, and we always seem to come away feeling like we got more out of it than the students.
“We’re doing our second year in Australia, too, and I just got back from Japan and Korea, where we’re looking to add workshops next year,” he said.
Bak’s jazz workshops will feature instrumental-only concentrations in trumpet, saxophone, trombone, guitar, piano, double bass, electric bass and drums, but no vocal program. The intensive five-day camp will run from 9 a.m-5 p.m. each day, and will begin with Monday’s placement exams, during which intermediate students will be required to play Duke Ellington’s C Jam Blues.
“It’s only two notes,” Maloon says, “so I don’t think any of them will have trouble reading through it. And having a vocal program would have, I think, taken the whole camp in a different direction.”
Advanced instrumental students can choose between the jazz standards Blue Bossa, Autumn Leaves, Stella by Starlight and Now’s the Time. All may also be asked to play one major and/or one minor scale using two octaves.
Following their placement, students will participate in small combo and large ensemble studies, individual practices, listening and jam sessions, and preparation for a closing 6 p.m. concert at the Bak Middle School of the Arts’ Mainstage that’s open to the public Friday. The lessons will be designed to give young jazz musicians a taste of the Juilliard student’s life, including emphasis on refining technique and performance, and broadening their understanding of improvisation and jazz styles – all for $350. Jeff Chafin of Chafin Musicenter, and John and Dixie Jarvis of Music Man, provided scholarships to students who couldn’t afford the tuition.
“Our prices are lower than the other schools offering Summer Jazz Workshops,” Maloon says. “It’s very affordable, but it was also first-come, first-served through applications, not auditions. So even though we were initially expecting around 45 students, we finally had to cut off the total at 81. There’s a kid coming from Wisconsin, one from Virginia, a few from Orlando and the Florida west coast, and some from Broward and Dade counties. And I made sure that area band directors knew about it, so many are coming from throughout Palm Beach County.”
Like Allen, Maloon studied at multiple colleges and universities (Augustana College and Northwestern University, both in Illinois, and the University of Iowa) after moving to the United States in 1984. Now in his 10th year as Bak band director, he’d worked previously at multiple area high schools since moving to South Florida from Illinois in 1996. He’ll be present for all five days of the Summer Jazz Workshops, even if he doesn’t know what his exact role will be.
“I’ll mainly function as a facilitator,” Maloon says. “I plan to be in the background, although I’ll do whatever’s needed to make things run smoothly. There are 12 to 15 Bak students who’ll be here, and they get my instruction all the time. I want them to experience the Juilliard teaching methods.”
A sax player takes a solo for the Bak Middle School Jazz Band.Juilliard was founded in the early 20th century to provide an American educational alternative to U.S. classical prodigies, who often had to attend European conservatories to achieve higher learning. Yet Maloon is impressed at how far the school’s jazz studies program has come in only 10 years.
“I think Juilliard’s jazz program is already equal to its classical side in stature,” he says. “Their entire staff is the best of the best, a who’s-who of jazz that’s based in New York City, where you can play and listen to jazz as well as study and teach it.”
In the fall of 2010, Juilliard received 2,466 undergraduate applications, of which the school admitted only 7.4 percent. Bak admits nearly three times that percentage through its auditions, although far more still get turned away than get accepted.
“There are a lot of students who are preparing earlier now than in the past,” Maloon says, “so it can get tough statistically. I’m there for every audition, and I think I had 215 kids who auditioned this year for only 40 spots.”
So does Maloon think he might have a future Juilliard student?
“Sure,” he says. “I have former students who are studying music now at the Manhattan School of Music, Oberlin Conservatory, and Yale. And another who’s going into her graduate program, and plans to audition at Juilliard.”
After a year in preparation – which reached a breakneck pace once Bak started its summer break June 6 – Maloon sounds one-third exhausted and two-thirds exhilarated a few days before the start of the Summer Jazz Workshops.
“It’s been hectic,” he says with a sigh. “But Juilliard is trying to address nearly every level of music student here, which I think is great. I’m really looking forward to meeting the kids, and working alongside these great undergraduate students and instructors. Carl Allen has done it all, Brandon Lee is one of the youngest Juilliard faculty members ever, and even though Ron Blake and I grew up together, I still love to watch him at work.
“The University of Illinois asked me to teach at a trombone camp this summer, but I turned them down. I had to stay here for this.”