Nat Hentoff, probably our national Jazz writer, pens an essay in The Wall Street Journal on how a teacher in New York is getting elementary school children turned onto jazz:
"Ms. Passarella told me that she teaches "in a looped classroom that gave me two years to develop my program with the same children, starting in the first grade. I began mixing great works of art with classical music; and over time I introduced rock, the blues and jazz."
A childhood friend, blues guitarist Joey Leone, had at first introduced her to the music of John Coltrane, and when she played his recordings "the children were drawn to the range of feelings in the songs as I gave them the backgrounds of the compositions.
"'Alabama,' for example, was about Martin Luther King and racial discrimination; and while 'My Own True Love' concerned a man and a woman, John Coltrane's 'Love Supreme' expressed a love for humanity.....
Ms. Passarella's second-grade students, she says, would have told him how moved they were by not only the ballads "but the more avant-garde recordings, such as 'Interstellar Space.'" She notes that, through her teaching, "I have discovered that young children have open, welcoming minds, and the more pure and emotional the music, the more they connect. Soon they were hooked on John Coltrane's music....."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121928401672659037.html?mod=opinion_journal_leisure_art
A Love Supreme, Crescent, Soul Trane, Live at Birdland, Live at the Village Vanguard, Thelonious Monk & John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall.... That is some good stuff.
"Ms. Passarella told me that she teaches "in a looped classroom that gave me two years to develop my program with the same children, starting in the first grade. I began mixing great works of art with classical music; and over time I introduced rock, the blues and jazz."
A childhood friend, blues guitarist Joey Leone, had at first introduced her to the music of John Coltrane, and when she played his recordings "the children were drawn to the range of feelings in the songs as I gave them the backgrounds of the compositions.
"'Alabama,' for example, was about Martin Luther King and racial discrimination; and while 'My Own True Love' concerned a man and a woman, John Coltrane's 'Love Supreme' expressed a love for humanity.....
Ms. Passarella's second-grade students, she says, would have told him how moved they were by not only the ballads "but the more avant-garde recordings, such as 'Interstellar Space.'" She notes that, through her teaching, "I have discovered that young children have open, welcoming minds, and the more pure and emotional the music, the more they connect. Soon they were hooked on John Coltrane's music....."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121928401672659037.html?mod=opinion_journal_leisure_art
A Love Supreme, Crescent, Soul Trane, Live at Birdland, Live at the Village Vanguard, Thelonious Monk & John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall.... That is some good stuff.
Check out The Kids for Coltrane website, http://thecoltranehome.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/kids-for-coltrane-part-2/, I think you will be impressed by how innovative this teacher is and what she has accomplished.
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