elizabeth!

“We gotta flip the script on what a gangsta is — if you ain’t a gardener, you ain’t gangsta.”

This TED Talk is worth 10 minutes of your time. Ron Finley and his volunteer organization LA Green Grounds, recently profiled in the NY Times, are using urban gardening to take back the health of their South Central LA community. It’s inspiring.

“If kids grow kale, kids eat kale. If they grow tomatoes, they eat tomatoes. But when none of this is presented to them, if they’re not shown how food affects the mind and the body, they blindly eat whatever you put in front of them.”

Learn how to get involved.

Wayne Shorter recently said

To me, the word jazz means ‘I dare you’

and that says volumes to me. Dare to try something new. Dare to be in the moment. Dare to be you without qualifications. Dare to play drums without your left hand.

To listen to more of his thoughts on playing – including great anecdotes about Miles Davis’s leadership style, check out the NPR interview from February 2013.

I found out about this from Dave Douglas’s review of Wayne on the new site Talkhouse, which allows musicians to write about other musicians.

And if you need a refresher on Wayne’s music, visit his website. He’s doing some shows celebrating his 80th birthday coming up soon.

March is Music in our Schools Month!  Here are a few concrete things you can do to support music education in our schools:

• Call your local school music teacher, and ask how you can donate your time or money to their program
• Email this list of free celebrity Public Service Announcements to your local radio station and ask them to play one or some during the month of March
• Post this list of 10 skills children get from arts education to your Facebook page or Twitter feed
• Visit the National Association of Music Educators for more information and statistics about how music helps our students grow and develop into fantastic adults!

I’m proud to teach at this school – she is one of my piano students!

February is Black History Month, and I have been in Los Angeles playing Jazz in Schools assemblies with a great group of people! Here’s Tina Raymond (drums), Harry Kim (trumpet), Ernie Fields, Jr. (saxophones and flute), Ryan Cross (acoustic bass), me (trombone and voice), and Jessy J (piano and saxophone).

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We have been having a blast performing for elementary school students all around the L.A. area. The kids are having fun and learning a lot about jazz! Thanks to the L.A. Jazz Society for making it all possible!