The JAS Academy, the renowned summer jazz program in Aspen, Colorado, is unlike any other program of its kind. Created and run in a partnership between the Frost School of Music and music presenter Jazz Aspen Snowmass (JAS), the JAS Academy offers the highest level of jazz musical instruction for its college-age students, together with Frost’s distinctive career training and opportunities to perform in a major festival.
Uniquely among programs of its kind, the JAS Academy covers all costs for all students, making it a powerful beacon for talent unrestricted by economic status, and a nexus for new jazz artistry.
JAS president/CEO and founder Jim Horowitz, who grew up in Miami Beach, connected to his hometown music school as he began thinking of restarting the Academy, which closed in 2008 in the wake of the financial crisis. “The idea was that of a collaboration between [Jazz Aspen Snowmass], which had always been primarily a music festival and presenter, with a bonafide university,” Horowitz says. “It was meant to marry the two organizations and our two strengths.”
A former jazz pianist who also worked as an agent and manager before starting Jazz Aspen in 1991, Horowitz was drawn by the Frost School method of teaching career as well as musical skills. “From the beginning what appealed to us about the Frost curriculum is that it has an emphasis on helping the students understand the music business, and not just how to play,” Horowitz says.
That understanding is put into practice at the JAS academy, in the famous ski resort town that's become a year-round cultural and vacation destination. “It’s not a campus in isolation, but a program grounded in the summer presenting season,” says Horowitz.
The revived JAS Academy was launched in 2018. Artistic director Christian McBride, the bassist, composer and bandleader who’s one of the most influential and charismatic artists in jazz, and who headed the Academy from 1999 to 2008, returned to lead the program once again.
“Christian is so amazing on so many levels,” says Frost School Professor and JAS Academy program director Charles Bergeron, a renowned bassist and bandleader. “He’s inspiring not just to the students but to me and so many of the faculty.”
Students, who range from the sophomore to doctoral level, are chosen by a rigorous blind audition process, and come from all over the United States. They're immersed in an invigorating and demanding program.
“Camps all over just focus on their playing,” says Bergeron. “We’re giving them hands-on training in all the other things a 21st century musician needs to know for a sustainable career.” Teachers include Frost School Dean Shelton G. Berg and Professor and Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives and Innovation Reynaldo Sanchez, and there are classes and workshops in production, business, technology and entrepreneurship. Students compose, record and perform their own music. Bergeron even has students write a mission statement and press release, and present themselves to Horowitz and the faculty, practicing how to sell their music to a concert buyer or record label.
“I say ‘look at yourself through three different lenses,” Bergeron says. “You’re the artist. But you’re also the producer and the entrepreneur.”
This summer the program was revamped still further. The Academy’s first two-week-long Big Band Session was moved to June, so students could perform in JAS’s popular June Experience, a three-day festival of jazz, soul, blues, Caribbean, New Orleans, gospel and fusion music at venues around Aspen. McBride led students in the JAS Academy Big Band, playing a tribute to Aretha Franklin with GRAMMY-winning vocalist Lisa Fischer.
Meanwhile, the Academy’s second session, July 29 to August 12, centers for the first time on a new genre - Afro-Caribbean jazz, led by Frost School Professor Etienne Charles, famed for his dynamic mix of Afro-Caribbean and other jazz styles. “It’s a different flavor, different music, different guest artists, different instrumentation,” says Bergeron, who says Horowitz suggested the shift.
With McBride having to focus on his late summer duties as artistic director of the Newport Jazz Festival, and Charles well known through his performances at Jazz Aspen, the new leader “was an obvious choice,” says Horowitz.
Afro-Caribbean session students will finish with an August 10 concert at the JAS Cafe Summer Series. Charles will lead students in a big band tribute to Harry Belafonte, the legendary singer, actor, and activist, with singer Rene Marie, vocalist on Charles’ critically acclaimed new album “Creole Orchestra.” They’ll be joined by the Shelly Berg Trio, with Berg and two stellar Cuban musicians; Frost professor and drummer Dafnis Prieto, and bassist Carlitos del Puerto, playing music from Berg’s just released Latin album "Alegría.”
All these powerful experiences and opportunities are free. “It’s great for the Academy,” says Horowitz. “It allows us to find the most talented young artists out there, who have talent, potential and careers that can really be impacted by a program like this.”
