Our KNX Hero of the Week is a jazz instructor who enriches the minds of young people through music.
Professional musician Barry Cogert is the managing director and co-founder of Jazz Angels based in Los Angeles County. He loves teaching kids the power of music and live performance. Jazz Angels was born after a discussion Cogert had with a few other musicians about how great it would be to get middle schoolers excited about jazz music.
“Middle school is like a tough age, and we thought, boy, if we could get that age group of people to stand up and improvise in front of somebody, then they'll overcome their fears of doing anything and they'll also realize it's OK if they make a mistake,” Cogert explained to Heroes host Heather Jordan.
Once kids get to the high school level, he said there’s tons of peer pressure to not make a mistake.
“So we figured, just get that behind you,” Cogert said.
The non-profit started with 10 kids, and in the beginning, it was hard to find a place to play. He eventually convinced a place to let the kids play and he recalled everybody loving the performance.
That was 19 years ago. Since then, there’s been over 4,000 participants in the program.
Cogert said playing jazz is a great sport. “There's no winners, there's no losers, no one goes to the hospital with broken bones, and everyone leaves the performance or the gig feeling really wonderful,” he explained.
“We are all-inclusive, all-welcoming organizations. Everyone that works for us knows how to arrange music. So we welcome all instruments.”
They’ve had kids play all kinds of instruments from a clarinet to a harmonica.
“Jazz is a really large scope of music,” Cogert said.
And although kids can bring their own instruments, it’s not mandatory.
“We have a great instrument recycling program where I ask people to look in their closet and find that saxophone they haven't played in 20 years and they get it to us and we fix it up and we give it to children that wanna play it,” he said. “And no one has ever turned away for financial reasons.”
There are quarterly programs within Jazz Angels. The next one being their Fall session that starts on Sept. 14.
“It's a small group, it's a really fun thing, we provide lessons if they need it, and these performance opportunities and trips and things they would never do or people they would never meet without being in our program,” he noted.
They have bands rehearsing before they do a few performances, then they wrap up the Fall session before the holiday season.
“They don't have to sign up for a year or even a semester,” Cogert said.
This gives kids the opportunity to sign up for 10 weeks to try it out.
“I always tell everyone, we're 100% satisfaction guaranteed organization,” he noted.
Anybody interested in joining the Jazz Angels can find more information here.
Check out all our KNX Heroes here.