Singer Lucia Lužinská and her band touring schools to teach kids about jazz. (source: Courtesy of the Jazz Goes to School project.)
TO ACQUAINT secondary school students with jazz, Slovak singer Lucia Lužinská and her band All Time Jazz toured Slovakia with an interactive concert called Jazz Goes to School. Between February 11 and 19, they performed in Banská Bystrica, Košice and Bratislava for about 1,500 students, project organisers wrote in a press release.
"We did not want to do it in the way traditional educational concerts were done in the previous regime," Lužinská said. "We are living in the 21st century, we are in the European Union and some things simply belong to the basic 'outfit' of a cultural person. Music covers a wide definition, and jazz is part of that."
The established jazz singer used the concerts to inform the students about the development of jazz, electronic instruments and scat, a style in which the singer imitates a musical instrument. Lužinská and her band performed an original arrangement of Summertime that combines jazz, groove and hip-hop.
The Jazz Goes to School project resembles the famous Young People's Concerts by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, the Sme daily wrote.
Lužiská pointed out to the daily that even though jazz is an established music genre in Slovakia with many excellent musicians and singers, establishing jazz classes at schools would require a lot of effort.
