Paving Way for Monk at Music Center

With great fanfare, the Music Center of Los Angeles County welcomed the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz as an affiliate company (“Music Center Gives Jazz a Major Gig,” Calendar, May 28). Congratulations are certainly in order to both.

With the blessing and the active participation of Sheldon I. Ausman, chairman of the Music Center Operating Co. (who has also joined the Monk Institute Board of Trustees), the Music Center has at last officially recognized jazz as an art form worthy of presentation alongside symphonic and choral music, opera, dance and theater. The importance of Ausman’s involvement cannot be overemphasized.

As one whose wedding recessional was “Round Midnight,” I yield to no one in my admiration for the late Thelonious Monk. The Monk Institute was created and is chaired by his son T.S. Monk, who is both an accomplished musician and a student of marketing and business management. Unlike many “artists” who consider board development and fund-raising beneath them, T.S. Monk takes an active part in these essential functions. And he has an evangelical zeal for promoting jazz and honoring the legacy of his father and other jazz masters.

T.S. Monk is the single biggest asset of the Monk Institute, which has compiled an enviable 11-year track record of promoting jazz through competitions and educational programs, and it will now be able to expand its programs and services at a venue that will benefit greatly from its presence.

Having said all this, it would have been nice if, somewhere amid all the hoopla, recognition could also have been extended to a jazz education program in existence at the Music Center since 1994, leaving the Monk Institute a strong foundation on which to build. JazzAmerica, which I founded in 1994 along with Buddy Collette and Valerie Fields, provided jazz instruction of the highest caliber to more than 250 Los Angeles County area high school students over the past three summers.

These master classes were funded in part by Associated Presentations, the presenting arm of the Music Center Operating Co. JazzAmerica students have won scholarships to the most prestigious music schools in the country, and two of them have won the Music Center Spotlight Awards in the jazz category.

JazzAmerica instructors have included Collette, Gerald Wiggins, Bobby Bryant, Ndugu Chancler, Washington Rucker, John Stephens, Richard Simon, Leslie Baker, Fernando Pullum, Jackie Kelso and Anthony White. The summer program was developed in association with Don Dustin of the Los Angeles Unified School District, Diane Watanabe of the Los Angeles County Office of Education and such high school music teachers as Sid Lasaine and Reggie Andrews.

At the Music Center reception welcoming the Monk Institute, T.S. Monk, honorary co-chair Billy Dee Williams and artistic director Herbie Hancock each emphasized that “it’s about the music.” Based on that criterion, JazzAmerica was a resounding success. On a bandstand full of talented student musicians, at least two-thirds of them had been involved in the JazzAmerica program. Most of them were not introduced, so I would like to give them credit here: Alfredo Rivera, Bram Glik, Keschia Potter, Isaac Smith, Miles Mosley, Brandon Owens, Aaron Owens, Antonio Austin and Nadir Jeevanjee.

JazzAmerica had minimal funding, no heavy hitters on its board of directors and the same sort of growing pains that most fledgling nonprofits experience. I fully understand why the Music Center would want a more solid, stable and accomplished organization as its official jazz entity.

I thank Sandra Kimberling, president of the Music Center Operating Co., and Associated Presentations for their support. JazzAmerica will undoubtedly regroup and come back stronger than ever. Meanwhile, at the Music Center, Hancock, as artistic director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, will call the next tune.