YOUTH JAZZ
This organization has already been registered
Someone in your organization has already registered and setup an account. would you like to join their team?Profile owner : d******r@y*******z.us
Mission Statement
Youth Jazz provides a real world learning environment and professional music industry experience for the next generation of jazz artists. Youth Jazz brings together a diverse range of individuals, organizations, and businesses to support our mission. We bring validated individual and collective professional experience to the jazz education and ensemble performance process as both artists and educators. It’s a great program and fills an inherent void that naturally exists between the institutional learning environment and the actual real-life experience of working in the music industry. Youth Jazz Alumni come from cities and towns throughout the Kansas City metropolitan area. KC is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With 8,472 square miles (21,940 km) and a population of more than 2.2 million people, it is the second-largest metropolitan area centered in Missouri (after Greater St. Louis) and is the largest metropolitan area in Kansas, though Wichita is the largest metropolitan area centered in Kansas. Alongside Kansas City, Missouri, these are the suburbs with populations above 100,000: Overland Park, Kansas; Kansas City, Kansas; Olathe, Kansas; Independence, Missouri; and Lee’s Summit, Missouri. Youth Jazz is a unique program based in Creative Youth Development (CYD). CYD describes programs that blend excellence in artistic instruction with principles of positive youth development. Participants represent the diversity of demographic inherent to the Kansas City metropolitan area. Our organization includes members of all jazz generations, ethnicities, genders, and economic backgrounds. Kansas City Area Youth Jazz Inc (aka Youth Jazz) is officially determined by the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt nonprofit organization under IRC Section 501(c)(3) with further Public Charity status thus allowing donors to deduct contributions they make to Youth Jazz under IRC Section 170. Effective Date of Exemption: February 08, 2023. The 2022 Season was our very first fundraising year for the program. Our program budget is in place and our funding goal is set. Our professional staff and esteemed jazz faculty are currently unpaid community volunteers. Our collective motivation is to simply pass down our proven professional experiences and technical knowledge of the jazz musical art form to our youngest generations. We do this through a four-month season of 16 rehearsals, concerts, and recording sessions that produces a professional album released commercially on a professional jazz record label. Fellows perform masterworks, original compositions, and special arrangements that are written specifically for them, learn the process of preparing music for commercial release, and learn about booking live performances in the community, among other vital skills. Among our program goals is to totally immerse participants in an artist-level program that also provides useful insights about the professional music industry both before AND also while attending college, university, or conservatory music programs. The Kansas City Area Youth Jazz experience helps refine and inform such opportunities and experiences within a more realistic context. We seek tax-deductible funding support for the program by selling the recordings we produce, ensemble sponsorships, booking concerts, donations, and grants. We use this tax-deductible funding according to our program budget, for strategic investments in this project, and for arts integration purposes. And, finally - IT'S FREE! There are no application fees, tuition fees, or participation fees. Yes, we purposely designed Kansas City Area Youth Jazz Fellowships to be merit-based and of no cost to selectees in order to eliminate significant economic barriers to participation in this art industry scholarship opportunity. Thus, it's a tangible value worth thousands of dollars in savings when compared to most other remotely comparable applied jazz programs around the world. — Christopher Burnett, Founder + Artistic Director
About This Cause
Kansas City Area Youth Jazz is a spring and summer program designed to provide the next generation of artists with a professional music industry experience and real world learning environment that is genuinely unique. Students rehearse and learn advanced repertoire, gain leadership experience through community performances, and record a professional album in a professional recording studio to culminate each season. This FREE program is also merit based for participants to preclude any financial barriers.