By Todd Matthews

As far as jazz vocalist Greta Matassa is concerned, she has studied with the greats. Ella Fitzgerald taught her how to scat . . . . Anita O'Day showed her a thing or two about phrasing . . . . And she honed her sense of rhythm with Frank Sinatra . . . .

Most jazz vocalists would savor the thought of learning under the direction of such musical giants. According to Matassa, most jazz vocalists still can. "As a teenager, I was very much into learning about music by just listening to it, singing along to it, dissecting it." While it is true that Matassa didn't directly work with the likes of Fitzgerald, O'Day and Sinatra, she did manage to build a successful career as a jazz musician by dismissing a formal education in music and, instead, learning the art largely by listening to records and teaching herself. "At the time," says Matassa, "I thought, 'I bet I can learn a lot by just singing along with these people. Make them my teachers.' In a nutshell, that's what I did. I ear-trained by listening in-depth and trying to get as close to the particular sounds and things they were doing. I learned to do everything I have done by copying what I thought was really good that somebody did, and then homogenizing it and making it a part of my own concept and in-the-moment-ness of jazz. I borrowed a lot of it, but I made it my own."

The importance of music education in jazz is a topic much discussed among critics and musicians. During the first half of the twentieth century, jazz was "taught" in the various clubs and dance halls across the country. In 1940s New York City, clubs such as the Three Deuces, the Onyx, Kelly's Stable, and the Spotlite lined Fifty-Second Street, and served as proving grounds for jazz notables like Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, and Coleman Hawkins. In Harlem, Minton's Playhouse was "schooling" jazz musicians -- and turning out superstars.

Indeed, many of the top musicians throughout the history of jazz have at times bemoaned the importance of music education, if not dismissed it altogether. Roy Hargrove once commented, "You can't learn jazz in school." Miles Davis, in his autobiography, painfully recalled his schooling at Julliard as a "sorry" experience that "bored [me] to tears." Davis eventually dropped out, turning instead to the New York jazz clubs for musical direction. Similarly, Louis Armstrong learned to read music only after joining a riverboat band. Fats Waller quit high school to take a job as a pianist with a vaudeville troupe. And Charlie Parker dropped out of high school and moved to New York City in order to perform in jazz clubs.

"Not everybody should go through school," says Chuck Deardorf, Professor of Music and the Music Department Administrator at Cornish College of the Arts. "Some students we've had here were very talented players, but not academically inclined. They came in and after one semester said, 'I don't want to sit in theory class and talk about this stuff. I want to stay at home with my record player, take off solos, and just play my horn.'"

Is jazz education necessary? Does the improvisational nature of jazz make it impossible to formally learn? What are educational institutions doing to prepare up-and-coming jazz musicians for a career in the industry? The questions are worthy of exploration.

OUT OF THE CLUBS AND INTO THE CLASSROOMS
"For a long time, learning to play jazz was dependent upon active musicians and gigs where one could play a lot, perform badly, and get better," says David Joyner, Director of Jazz Studies at Pacific Lutheran University (PLU). "Now it has found a sanctuary in colleges."

Joyner's observation highlights the process that took place in bringing jazz education out of the clubs and into the classrooms. Sixty years ago, the term 'jazz education' was a contradiction. Jazz was viewed much differently. It was the pop music -- played heavily on the radio and filling the Top 40 charts. If you could play the saxophone, you could find a steady job in a jazz club. Moreover, the music changed so many times during the twentieth century -- from New Orleans through the 1920s, swing through the 1940s, bebop through the 1950s, and free jazz and fusion throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Jazz was difficult to keep up with in terms of defining the music and teaching it in colleges.

"Everybody was a jazz expert up until the end of World War II," says Joyner. "Increasingly, the music became more artistic and esoteric. The guys who did learn outside a conservatory structured the music. They brought the street into the academy."

That's not to say that jazz was immediately embraced by the colleges and conservatories. As the live jazz clubs shut down, and the music became marginalized, jazz education struggled for a foothold in academia. This is particularly true when one thinks that jazz has only gained respect in colleges over the last thirty years.

"For years and years it was a hard-fought battle," says Deardorf. "Music education primarily consisted of departments run by and for classical musicians. Jazz was the bastard child that they either tolerated or not." Deardorf recalls stories of students sneaking into college music rooms after hours to play jazz.

According to a recent publication by Jazz Times, there are more than 400 colleges that offer jazz education. In the Pacific Northwest, the top jazz schools include Cornish, University of Washington, Washington State University (in Pullman), Western Washington University, Whitworth College (in Spokane), Pacific Lutheran University (in Tacoma), and Shoreline Community College (north of Seattle). "When I first started teaching college," he adds, "there were maybe three or four places where you could study jazz in the Pacific Northwest. It's daunting [today]. It begs the question, 'Where are all these people going to work?'"

JAZZ EDUCATION'S COMMUNITY ROLE
A degree in music or jazz studies won't guarantee the aspiring musician a recording contract or a fruitful career as a jazz musician. This is one of the most common criticisms leveled at jazz education: How is a degree going to help me get a job as a musician? "If you go to an accounting school," says Deardorf, "they have a placement program. There is a job to be had getting out of school. For musicians, they have to look at it not as a vocational thing, but as a college education in the arts."

Surprisingly, the majority of jazz educators and musicians interviewed for this article were frank about this issue: You don't need a music degree to be a professional musician.

If that's true, why study jazz?

One word: community.

When jazz clubs began to shut down in the late-twentieth century, and the music lost its footing in mainstream popularity, the sense of community -- instruction, mentoring, and jam sessions among peers -- that once took place in the clubs moved into the classroom. With fewer and fewer places for a musician to perform and hone one's skills, classrooms became an important part of one's career. "Schools, by and large, have taken over the job of what jam sessions used to do at clubs," says Deardorf. This is particularly true at Cornish, where it is common to find various student groups -- not "official" Cornish combos -- jamming in rehearsal rooms late into the night on Fridays and Saturdays. "If you have a student body of 50 or 60 jazz majors, as we do here," adds Deardorf, "you are going to find people you want to work with and play with."

Aspiring musicians that study together at college tend to perform together as professionals. If a tenor saxophone player is looking for a drummer, he or she may turn to peers with whom that individual worked in school.

PLU's Joyner echoes this thought: "I tell my students, 'You have to create a jazz community within this school. You have to be hanging out in apartments, listening to recordings, playing for nothing in the corner of the coffee shop -- and keep at it. Know you are playing bad and what you need to fix.' All the kids get together, play together, and really talk about it."

Another advantage of music education -- particularly in the Pacific Northwest -- is the caliber of instructors. The old adage, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach," isn't true at area colleges; a majority of the top jazz instructors can be found in the jazz clubs as often as in the classrooms. "In jazz education," says Deardorf, "It's crucial for the teachers to be active professionals. A lot of schools have teachers that were professionals 20 or 30 years ago, and don't have any connections to the real world now. That's fine, except that it doesn't really help the new musician to know their instructor played with Stan Kenton in 1972. That's great, but the world is very different now. Those road big bands don't exist anymore."

A jazz education also helps to organize musical studies. A musician with a formal music background and a musician without will probably reach the same conclusions with their instruments: theory, harmony, rhythm, performance, et al. But the organization and structure inherent in music education often proves to be advantageous to a musician.

True, you don't need a music education in order to be a musician. But many instructors and musicians agree it does help.

"I don't believe that we're doing anything [now]that wasn't done sixty years ago," says Michael Brockman, saxophone and jazz professor at the University of Washington, and co-director of the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra. "We're not teaching much beyond [what] the 'do-it-yourself-ers' were experiencing and learning years ago. It's just that we are accelerating that process, and compressing ten or fifteen years of study and hard practice into four years."

Similarly, Deardorf comments, "There's nothing that we teach here that you can't learn on your own. But when you are doing it on your own, you're coming backward at all the areas of musicianship from your instrument. It's hard to find organized ways to get to all these different areas of music -- like theory, ear-training, history. That's the best thing a school can do: give you a concentrated program with all of these areas, to give you all these different areas of musicianship that all feed your playing and writing, then put it together so you know what you are doing."

PART TWO | PREPARING JAZZ STUDENTS FOR THE REAL WORLD

When tenor saxophonist Hadley Caliman was a teenager, the music stores and jazz clubs that lined Los Angeles's Central Avenue served as his university. Frequenting jazz clubs, networking with other musicians, and trading records and sheet music among peers taught Caliman how to play the horn and lay the foundation to what would truly be a fruitful career in jazz. "Whoever had any songs copied out of the books, we would get that and copy it ourselves," recalls Caliman. "That's how we learned songs." No music school could have prepared Caliman for his career: touring with Carlos Santana or working with the late Dexter Gordon. Instead, it was Caliman's drive to learn music, largely by ear-training, which led to a fruitful jazz career for the veteran musician.

Caliman is only one of many jazz musicians who have learned the business of music inside a jazz club instead of a classroom.

Colleges are supposed to prepare students for a professional career -- whether it is in music or economics. Yet, many argue, music institutions fail to provide students the business tools they need in order to become professional musicians. Are music colleges preparing students for the 'real world' of jazz? It is a subject of big debate in many jazz schools across the country.

"When you graduate college, after investing lots of time and money on your chosen profession, you should feel fairly confident about entering the workplace and making a decent living for yourself," says saxophonist Kareem Kandi, a graduate of Cornish College of the Arts, and currently an instructor at Tacoma School of the Arts. "I don't think jazz colleges give students the skills necessary for making a living as a musician."

Jazz vocalist Greta Matassa echoes this thought. "I think [jazz education] is primarily music-oriented, rather than [focused on] practical information about gigging," she says. "I got my education by going and hanging out with cocktail pianists. They were very forthcoming with information. It was nice to talk to some of these guys, and ask pragmatic questions: How do you get a gig? What's reasonable to ask to be paid? What's a set list? How do you deal with a drunk? All that kind of practical information."

Music colleges don't entirely fail. The institutions do a fantastic job of forming what is often a young person's first musical community. Aspiring musicians that study together at college tend to perform together as professionals. A jazz education also helps to organize musical studies, providing a structure that often proves advantageous. Instructors who also work as professional musicians tend to provide the expertise and insight necessary to further develop a student's musical goals. And formally educated musicians often have better abilities in terms of organizing material, writing charts, and musically describing needs from other performers in a group.

Still, there is a very distinct disconnect in moving from the graduation ceremony to the jazz club -- particularly for recent graduates looking to develop a career as a professional musician.

"[School] is a small instrument in the tool box of life," says John Bishop, the founder of Origin Records -- one of the leading jazz labels in the Pacific Northwest. "It's a place to meet people, practice, have some sort of social life, and realize that you have to interact with other people in order to get things done. Other than that, if you just took the curriculum for any school, it has basically nothing to do with the musician's life."

There are several reasons for this disconnect.

One is a time limitation. Many degree programs are jammed with educational requirements: music, literature, general studies, foreign language, mathematics -- there just is not time for a student to learn all the finer details of a music career in four years.

Another is priority. Most music educators agree that it doesn't take a professor with a PhD or an advanced degree to explain those things that could be learned in jazz clubs or among peers. "We make certain that the student has received the artistic training that is vital for them," says Michael Brockman, saxophone and jazz professor at the University of Washington, and co-director of the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra. "If they don't get it during their four years of college, they may never have an opportunity to get it." It's not so much that music educators don't agree the business aspects are important things for students to learn, according to Brockman. But, for the most part, there are lots of other places where one could learn those things.

That's not to say that music programs entirely ignore the business side of the industry. Third- or fourth-year students at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle are required to attend a music career class, where the topics include writing a bio and resume, recording a demo, producing a band list, and generating press releases. The college also brings in a number of professional, touring musicians who make performance stops in Seattle. At Pacific Lutheran University (PLU) in Olympia, many students are part of a 'gig list' -- where musicians perform at weddings, restaurant openings, and other special events. "I think that's wonderful for the student to suddenly have to answer to a client," says David Joyner, Director of Jazz Studies at PLU. "While they are playing for a grade, that may not do too much. But when they are playing for money, that's a different thing."

But in proportion to a student's entire course of study, the business aspects of a career in music are minimal.

MUSIC EDUCATION AS ONE OF MANY CAREER TOOLS
While some people argue that jazz education programs fail to prepare students for the industry, others argue that the industry isn't necessarily teachable. "You can't teach anybody to be really, really hungry," says Bishop. "The musicians I've known who have done well, it's been in their system. You just knew the first time you saw them that they were going to be professionals. They were hungry, and they would do anything that it would take."

Indeed, a professional career in music has more to do with an individual's networking and promotional abilities than educational background. The ability to treat music as a business is key to a successful career. Musicians who combine regular club gigs, private engagements, studio work, and teaching do reasonably well -- with or without a formal music education. "You learn early on that you've got to be flexible," adds Bishop. "[You have to be] ready to turn on a dime, ready to take opportunities when they show up, and just jump on stuff."

"There's so much that a musician ought to know," says Brockman. "At any given moment, you could be doing one job and planning to earn several hundred dollars from it so that you can pay your bills. But at the same time, you have to be lining up all the work for next month, and even the month beyond. If you don't keep that rolling at all times, then you are going to starve -- or you are going to have to get a job at Kinko's."

That discipline of being your own business manager and running a small business is a very difficult thing for an artist to take on and be responsible for. Often, how well one can manage his or her music career can make or break a musician. This is particularly true when considering that a jazz musician graduating from college may be carrying a debt of $30,000 or more -- a debt incurred paying for that education.

If business management skills are so important for a musician, why aren't those skills taught in the classroom? Because colleges traditionally focus on technique and theory. Most colleges and jazz departments see themselves as teaching an art form -- not necessarily a vocation. "You don't see colleges [that teach] creative writing or painting [offer] classes on how to deal with a gallery owner or write copy for an ad agency," says Chuck Deardorf, Professor of Music and the Music Department Administrator at Cornish College of the Arts.

Brockman adds, "After they have left their college studies," says Brockman, "that's when the school of hard knocks starts to kick in and they have to learn. Really, the bulk of their skill is learned long after they get out of college."

IT'S THE MUSICIANSHIP THAT MATTERS -- NOT EDUCATION
Perhaps it makes sense for jazz colleges to focus on the art and technique of jazz performance, rather than the business aspects -- particularly when very few jazz musicians are coming straight out of school and signing record deals or hiring managers. "Nobody is waiting with open arms for another jazz tenor saxophone player to play 'Giant Steps,'" says Deardorf.

Undoubtedly, how well a person plays an instrument outweighs whether that person went to school. It makes more sense for a college to focus on producing better musicians than better businessmen or businesswomen, particularly when it's the musicianship that matters and, in many instances, ultimately decides whether a musician gets a gig. The club owner or the party host who is going to hire a musician could probably care less about a degree in music. They just want to know how good the band sounds.

In the end, it all boils down to performance.

"I don't think it matters whether you have a degree on not," says saxophonist Kandi. "There are many great musicians who've had extensive schooling and many great musicians who've had no education in a formal college setting at all. When it comes time to perform it doesn't matter what your G.P.A. was in college or whether you have a master's degree or not. What matters is how you play."

Deardorf echoes this thought: "The music is the only important thing when it comes to musicianship. There are good players that people are going to want to play with. They didn't make it through high school, but they can play. You want to play with those people."

PART THREE | THE FUTURE OF JAZZ EDUCATION

Coming Soon . . .

This three-part series originally appeared in Earshot Jazz magazine.