The Jazz of Teaching

Solo, Collaboration, and Improvisation

LYNN MILLER

You could say there are three different Varsity Bands at Jackson Prep. The marching band starts with summer band camp and follows through football season in the fall. Concert season gears up in January as the band prepares for the statewide MSAIS Band Festival. As Festival music is mastered, the band begins to lean into jazz music. This third wave—jazz—is easily band director Steve Kincaid’s favorite. Patriot magazine sat down with Kincaid to find out more about music, education, and how his favorite musical style informs his teaching.

ABOVE: Prep’s Director of Bands Steve Kincaid, far left, waits while the Varsity Band tunes up for their performance at the 2021 MSAIS Band Festival. For the 13th year in a row, the Band received all superior ratings.

How does learning to play a musical instrument help students grow?

Educationally, my students learn to set and accomplish goals, self-evaluate, reflect, re-evaluate, refine, and collaborate. As they progress, they practice those same things in relation to a group. Music practice is geared towards perfection. Unlike sports, there are no 4th downs or 3rd strikes. The performance is a one-off chance to achieve technical and emotional perfection.

A unique aspect of music education is that it is the only place that teaches students to read music. Many people play an instrument by ear, but reading music allows for fast consumption of skill, style, vocabulary, and an understanding of music theory. Time spent learning to read music and becoming proficient on an instrument, mixed with the group dynamic, produces a myriad of well-documented social-emotional benefits.

How would you define jazz?

Jazz is a musical style, or, actually, styles, as there are many types, nationally and internationally. Musicians blend those types together to create even more types and then even more types. The variations keep coming.

When did you start playing jazz?

I had never played or really even listened to jazz music before I auditioned for the jazz band in

my freshman year in college. My high school band only had marching band and concert band.

What do you love about jazz?

At first, jazz was just something new. I really didn’t know what I was doing or not doing, I was just having fun playing music with my friends. As I progressed through my music education program and developed skills associated with jazz and jazz improvisation, I began to understand how to make that music come to life on my saxophone.

To appreciate jazz music, one has to have some understanding of its theory and complexity. Most popular music doesn’t require the level of understanding or education to play or listen to it, which leads to statements like “Jazz musicians play 30,000 chords for three people while pop musicians play 3 chords for 30,000 people.” The technical and intellectual skills needed to perform jazz and jazz improvisation well are in part what feeds my desire to play jazz.

I also love that jazz has structure, but musicians have complete autonomy over how to recreate it. You may recognize a melody, but the music played under that melody is created in flow, many times with just chord symbols to guide the musicians. Chord symbols tell you what notes are in a given chord, not what notes you should play or in what order. The voicing and re-voicing of chords, along with their note choices, enable a musician to change how the chords function and sound. How a musician interprets or voices those chords will be as individual as the words a person would use to tell a story. Like folktales passed down through the ages, jazz songs have been played for generations but seldom played exactly the same way twice. The mix of different musicians in a group creates a unique and almost non-repeatable version of a song and a completely different experience for the musician.

Inside the structure of the music and the freedom of interpretation and expression, there is cooperation with your fellow musicians. Experienced jazz musicians can seamlessly weave in and out of the music, allowing everyone the opportunity to express themselves musically without a lot of overlap. Playing with highly intuitive musicians gives you the security to be as creative and experimental as you want.

How do you teach students to play jazz?

Students learning to play jazz incorporate the traditional skills used to play all music, but they also have to discover and ask questions about how jazz concepts work. Being able to formulate the right questions is a valuable skill for a developing student. Jazz includes improvisation, which incorporates theory-related concepts like chord structures, chord patterns, and tonalities. Students create in real-time using skills that they have developed since they began playing. These improvised creations are representative of the musician’s thoughts and feelings about the music that they are playing.

Do you think there is a correlation between jazz and teaching?

Yes, if you think of jazz as creating in the flow. Assuming teachers are experts of the material they teach, they should have the ability to change direction, explore multiple or differing ideas and opinions, and allow for student creativity and differentiation of an individual’s outcome.

Is there jazz vocabulary that could be applied to the practice of teaching?

Improvisation—creating an alternate melody in real time. Musical terms I think you could use in teaching would be in concert (together, harmony) and dissonance (tension, problem, resolution).

What are three pieces of jazz that we should all know?

As music is individually touching, it would be impossible to prescribe songs from the unbelievably large library of jazz music. The three artists I name below are representative of different types of jazz that show freedom of expression, collaboration and aesthetic beauty. I am particular to early vocal versions of songs but these musicians are leaders in the field.

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ANYTHING FROM ELLA FITZGERALD: “IT DON’T MEAN A THING” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myRc-3oF1d0

ANYTHING FROM THELONIOUS MONK: “ROUND MIDNIGHT” PERFORMED BY OSCAR PETERSONS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7yazIH4rAI

ANYTHING FROM DIZZY GILLESPIE: “A NIGHT IN TUNISIA” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkemox0461U