Vail Jazz Goes to School inspires next generation

Students arrived at the Vilar Performing Arts Center by the busload earlier this week for the annual Vail Jazz Goes to School performance with a multi-piece live band, singing, dancing and plenty of education squeezed in.

Vail Jazz Goes to School has been bringing jazz education to Eagle County fourth and fifth graders for over 25 years. The timing is good because it exposes that age group to the music and different instruments they could play in school band, which typically starts in the fifth grade. Led by jazz professional Drew Zaremba, the kids are treated to fast-paced educational tid bits, including a lyric writing contest and a dance party.

“It’s great to know our history and know that this is truly America’s music and where it all came from,” Zaremba said.

Joining Zaremba on stage were other Vail Jazz Goes to School educators and musicians like Kathy Morrow on vocals, Domi Edson on bass, Allison Young on alto saxophone and clarinet, Shawn Williams on trumpet, Michael Pujado on percussion and Larry Dutmer on drums. Projected on stage were large photographs and videos of the legendary jazz artists the students were learning about.

Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald and more jazz legends were featured and their music was played by the band complete with improvisations from the band members.

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“After you hear a solo, it is good jazz etiquette to clap for them, right in the middle of a song, it’s OK,” Zaremba said. “They are improvising. We play the melody, but when they do their solo, they wonder what else they can do to add to the song, so they were making up the music as they were going along, isn’t that amazing?”

The band members talked about how jazz songs are in popular kids movies. For example, in the 2008 Disney-Pixar movie, WALL-E, Louis Armstrong’s “La Vie en Rose” was featured and the band had the kids do a sing-a-long to “Bare Necessities” to honor jazz great Louis Prima’s most well-known performance in “The Jungle Book” where he was the voice of the orangutan.

The program also explored the different types of dance influenced by jazz, such as the Charleston, jitterbug, mambo and cha cha before inviting the kids to get out of their seats and dance the boogaloo to a song by Lee Morgan called “The Sidewinder.”

The event also featured a student a few years older than the ones in the audience. Dominic Villasenor is a freshman at Battle Mountain High School and has played the trumpet for about nine years and has learned how to play five other instruments and participates in choir.  

“It was very fun to perform on stage. I love seeing all of the kids out there and it kind of reminds me of when I was younger and I used to go to performances like these. This is where the love for music starts,” Villasenor said.

There are four Vail Jazz Goes to School sessions in the Eagle County Schools each school year, culminating with the final session at the Vilar Performing Arts Center. Throughout that time frame kids learn about the history of jazz, typical instruments used to perform jazz music and even how to write lyrics. There was a contest where kids wrote lyrics to a melody and the topics ranged from the pet dog to hockey, Fortnite, even tigers and gorillas. The lyric winners from each school got to go up on stage and hear their lyrics performed by the jazz professionals in an actual song.

The energy was high and the attention spans of those fourth and fifth graders were captured by the band for over an hour. Vail Jazz Goes to School was founded by longtime performer and music teacher Tony Gulizia and the founder of Vail Jazz, Howard Stone, who both passed away two summers ago. The Vail-based nonprofit decided to close the bulk of its operations in October 2024 after 29 years but the programs in the schools were set to complete this year but the educational program’s future is uncertain.

“The legacy of jazz is to carry the music on to the next generation, to continue to inspire people with America’s greatest art form. I’m very grateful to Vail Jazz and their sponsors for continuing to put this program on,” Zaremba said. “I hope that there is continued philanthropy from the community here in Vail to keep this important program going, sharing the legacy of America’s music, and continuing to create creative-minded and entrepreneurial youth through involvement in the arts.”