Techniques and Tips for Elevating Jazz Education at Your School

Members of NAfME’s Council for Jazz Education will explore dynamic rehearsal techniques for jazz ensembles, how to integrate vocalists into a jazz ensemble setting, and tips and tricks to increase the ways you introduce improvisation to your students. Bring your questions for the panel for the Q&A session toward the end of the evening. We hope you’ll join us to connect with jazz educators of all experience levels from around the country!

Lisa Linde has been the instrumental music director at Newton South High School in Massachusetts since 1998. The Newton South Jazz Ensemble, which regularly receives top at festivals, most recently has been accepted into the 2018 and 2021 Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Festival as well as the Charles Mingus High School Jazz Festival for the past six years, placing second in 2019. A passionate advocate for gender equality in jazz, she is the founder of the nonprofit jazzhers, an organization committed to shaping the future of jazz by helping young musicians who identify as female and nonbinary to become connected to and feel empowered within the jazz community.

Bethany Robinson is a Yamaha Performing Artist, 2022 GRAMMY Music Educator Award Finalist, Chair of the NAfME Council for Jazz Education, President of the Indiana Jazz Educators Association, and serves on the Jazz Education Network Board. She is currently the Director of Jazz at Purdue University. Previously, she was the Jazz Director for Noblesville Schools in Noblesville, Indiana, for more than a decade. Under her leadership, the jazz program expanded from one to six bands, and the top jazz ensemble qualified for the Essentially Ellington Jazz Festival in 2021 and 2022, and won a state title in 2023.

Peter Sampson has been the Director of Bands at Whiteland Community High School in Indiana since 2008. While there he has more than doubled the size of the program to include three concert bands, three curricular jazz bands, jazz combos, pep band, and the Marching Warriors Marching Band. The Whiteland Jazz Bands have been honored as the Indiana State School Music Association (ISSMA) Jazz State Finalists four times and performed at the Indiana Music Education Association state conference and the Indiana State House. In 2014, Whiteland Jazz Band One was selected as a National Finalist in the Essentially Ellington program through Jazz at Lincoln Center. While attending this event the band was chosen as the subject of a documentary film called “On the Road to EE” that can be seen on the Jazz at Lincoln Center YouTube channel.

Dee Spencer is Professor of Jazz and Musical Theatre at San Francisco State University in California. She received her B.S. from Florida A&M University in Tallahassee; her M.M. from Washington University in St. Louis; and an EdD. from the University of San Francisco. She founded the Jazz Studies degree program in the School of Music at SFSU, where she served as director for five years, as well as the San Francisco Jazz Organization (SFJAZZ) education program, whose members performed for U.S. Senator Kamala Harris’s fundraiser at the African American Cultural Center. She also served as program director for the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts in Richmond, California.

NAfME presents this live virtual event at no charge to all as a service to the music education profession. To register, you must enter your NAfME member information or create a nonmember account. After registering, check your email for instructions. A recording of this program will be available to all registrants for one week following the live event. Members can also view archived NAfME webinars in the NAfME Academy. The views expressed are those of the presenter; they do not necessarily reflect the views of NAfME.