THE MUSIC ACADEMY JAZZ ENSEMBLES

The award-winning jazz ensemble presents their spring concert on May 3, at 7:30, under the direction of instructor, Jim Foschia, who is a two time Grammy award winner with Southwest Chamber Music.

Students audition every year for a coveted spot in one of three highly esteemed ensembles: A, B and C. All ensembles perform and compete regularly and in the past few years, the Jazz program has swept competitions at Reno, Western States, Irvine and Fullerton. The Academy office, the main office and the walls of the Jazz Room are filled with trophies and awards that Jazz keeps on bringing home. Soon we will need to build a new trophy room!

The Jazz Ensembles, particularly the small ensembles, comprised of members from the A and B group, play all over the city. They’ve played at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Redcat, The Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl, at the Essentially Ellington Festival and the Monterey Jazz Festival, opening for Sony Rollins.

Our Jazz students have a demanding rehearsal schedules yet keep up a full roster of Academic classes including many AP’s. The list of conservatory and four year colleges which our students gain acceptance is impressive. Some of these include: USC Thornton School of Music, Manhattan School of Music, New England Conservatory of Music, UNLV, Berklee School of Music and the “Mannes College’s New School of Music.”

Our jazz program started the same year the Music Academy was born—1987. We are going into year 27, without missing a beat on quality and the finest entertainment in the city. This is year alone, so many of our students received outstanding honors. We have Nathan Serot who won the National Trumpet Guild Award and Nashir Janmohamed, getting into the highly prestigious and very competitive Berklee Summer Jazz Camp. There’s Devin Daniels, sax prodigy who is winning every ward and scholarship he is applying to in alto, tenor and soprano sax, including: Semi-finalist in the Norman Pattiz Performer of the Year Award, finalist in the Zeto Rho Teen Talent Scholarship auditions, NANM , DOLA. finalist and acceptance into the Berklee Jazz Camp.

We keep the talent moving and the hits rolling. After 27 years of excellence, the Department of Jazz continues to be one of the crown jewels in the Music Magnet Progam and in the Los Angeles Unified School district.