As a professor of music at GSU and “Coordinator of Jazz,” jazz trumpeter Dr. Gordon Vernick develops young talent through a program he started in 2010, the Rialto Youth Jazz Orchestra (RYJO), and a middle-school outreach program, Rialto Jazz for Kids.
“Each year we audition for the orchestra in August and take about 50 kids into the program,” Vernick said. “We place them in combos of four and five based on their ability, which ranges from beginners to almost professional. From that we form the Jazz Orchestra, which is very selective. Three-fourths of those kids go on to study music at the university level.”
Vernick calls himself a “farmer,” planting musical seeds and overseeing their growth. He has also attracted an impressive list of co-farmers, an ad hoc faculty that includes many of the top names in Atlanta jazz: percussionist Justin Varnes, bassist Billy Thornton, saxophonist John Sanford, and my co-podcaster and co-blogger pianist Kevin Bales, to name a few. They’re up early, visiting the middle schools, working with talented youngsters before the start of their school day in sessions that will generate many of the kids who will later find themselves in the RYJO and perhaps even in a career in jazz.
“The kids that come through here are an intrinsic part of the jazz renaissance going on in Atlanta right now,” noted Bales, who directs the RYJO’s combos. “Consider a combo I worked with this last year. The pianist is choosing between Julliard and Northwestern. The alto player is going to Julliard on a full scholarship. The bassist is going the Julliard on a full ride on both jazz bass and classical tuba. Three years ago a local bass player, Andrew Sommers, was the first musician to be admitted to Julliard for both jazz and classical. Last year, Morgan Guerin moved to New York for a full ride at Manhattan School of Music and is now touring with legendary drummer-composer Terri Lyne Carrington.”
Getting into the Rialto Youth Jazz Orchestra is no cakewalk. Auditions each August yield the group for the coming school year.
“It’s prestigious, but it’s also a big commitment,” Vernick said. “They have to work hard at it. And they are held accountable. I tell them, ‘You’re not professionals but we’re going to treat you like professionals. There are expectations. Your part of the deal is that you take your music home and work on it.’ By the end of the school year the kids have heard it enough that they’re taking ownership. The important thing is they have to take ownership.”
Vernick likens the RYJO to a laboratory: 40 percent performance, 40 percent working on improvisation, 20 percent theory and record listening. Performing might be the most important part of the program, he proposes.
“The only way to find out if you know a song is to get up in front of people and play it,” he said. His weekly jam sessions at Atlanta’s Red Light Café, which often feature youngsters from the RYJO, play a role in that performing experience. “I absolutely do the jam sessions for educational purposes. I mean, how are we going to further this art if people aren’t playing it?”
Read the full article at: www.artsatl.org/tag/rialto-youth-jazz-orchestra/
Or listen to Gordon Vernick at the Velvet Note on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDuZSQa0thQ
The Professor and His Youth Jazz Orchestra
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