Applications due July 31, 2023

The Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz International Competition will be presented on October 14-15. Open to musicians age 30 and under from across the globe, this year’s competition will shine a spotlight on the piano. At stake is more than $150,000 in scholarships and prizes, including a $50,000 first place award, $25,000 second place, and $10,000 third place.

The Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz International Competition has played a pivotal role in identifying, empowering and promoting the next generation of jazz musicians, educators and influencers. The Institute’s Competition has launched the careers of major jazz artists including saxophonist Joshua Redman; vocalists Cécile McLorin Salvant, Jane Monheit and Jazzmeia Horn; pianist Kris Bowers; bassist Ben Williams; and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. These artists and dozens more from past Competitions have forged successful careers as performing and recording artists, as well as music educators helping to perpetuate America’s legacy of jazz.

The application for the 2023 Piano Competition can be found here. All materials must be received no later than Monday, July 31, 2023. The Competition location will be announced in the coming weeks. Please submit any questions to Leonard Brown at lebrown@hancockinstitute.org or by phone at +1 (202) 364-7272.

Prizes and scholarships will be awarded as follows:

First place – $50,000
Second place – $25,000
Third place – $10,000

Fifty percent of each prize will be paid directly to the winner. The remaining funds will be applied toward the winner’s future musical education.

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Press Inquiries: Alisse Kingsley 
akingsley@hancockinstitute.org
323.467.8508

You can submit payment for your application via PayPal or Credit Card at the link below.

Tuesday, April 4, 2023 • 1:00 PM ET

• Click here for details about the 2024 ED informance on April 10, 2024.

Washington, DC – The Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Education will present a peer-to-peer jazz informance on April 4, featuring the Institute’s Peer-to-Peer Jazz Quintet. Hosted by the U.S. Department of Education, the “informance” – a combination of performance and educational information – will be presented by a group comprising gifted music students from Baltimore, New York, and Washington, DC public high schools along with internationally acclaimed jazz trumpet recording artist Terell Stafford and renowned jazz educator Dr. JB Dyas.

The informance will be held at the U.S. Department of Education (ED) headquarters building in Washington, D.C., beginning at 1 pm ET, and livestreamed at the U.S. Department of Education’s media link here, to hundreds of school districts in the United States and around the world. The focus will be on raising the bar of music education in our public schools nationwide. Raising the bar in all areas of public school education, arts and academics alike, is the primary mission of U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and the Department.

Besides playing jazz at a level that belies their years, the students will talk to their like-age audience across the country and around the world not only about jazz – America’s indigenous musical art form – and its significance in American history and culture, but also about the importance of finding a passion for something early in life, working hard at it, being persistent, and believing in yourself. When young people hear this important message from kids their same age, they are often more likely to listen.

“We’ve found that young people often learn about certain things better from kids their same age, and one of those is jazz,” said Herbie Hancock, Chairman of the Institute, NEA Jazz Master, and Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). “And when you hear how accomplished these musicians are at such a young age, you know their peers are going to listen.”

The members of the Quintet include alto saxophonist Quinn Rehkemper and drummer Julian Frazier from the Baltimore School for the Arts (BSA); tenor saxophonist Seif Gharsellaoui from the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York, and pianist Jose Andre Montano from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, DC. Rounding out the quintet will be BSA’s director of jazz studies, Ed Hrybyk on bass.

“What an incredible learning experience it is to perform with Mr. Stafford,” said Rehkemper, who performed at last year’s ED jazz informance with jazz great Sean Jones. “Preparing the music of these two jazz masters, not to mention the prestigious opportunity to perform once again at the US Department of Education to highlight the multifaceted value of music education in our public schools, is incredibly educational and gratifying.”

In addition to learning how to read music and play an instrument, studying jazz also teaches students how music works in order to improvise and express their own unique thoughts and feelings musically. The study of jazz also teaches the life skills and deeply held American values that jazz represents: teamwork, unity with ethnic diversity, the correlation of hard work and goal accomplishment, persistence & perseverance, democracy, and the vital importance of really listening to one another.

“Music is a big part of my family’s life,” Secretary Cardona said in regards to last year’s informance, “There’s a level of listening, interdependence and collaboration that goes on in jazz that we can all learn from.”

While the informance in the auditorium at the US Department of Education can only accommodate a limited, invited audience of selected students, teachers, principals, and ED officials, it will be streamed nationally and internationally so all may partake.

“Jazz mirrors life in improvisation and in connecting with people around you,” added the Secretary. “Music and the arts give us a window into different cultures – and cultures are an expression of many kinds of music. It’s been said that music is the art that goes from the ears straight to the heart.”

The Herbie Hancock Institute’s National Peer-to-Peer Education Program has lead funding from the National Endowment of the Arts and United Airlines.

Download the full press release here.

From May 9-22, the Institute resumed its in-person Peer-to-Peer jazz education tours after two years of virtual programming due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With support from the National Endowment for the Arts and United Airlines, exceptionally talented student musicians from the Institute’s high school programs visited public middle and high schools in Delaware and Wisconsin for intensive performances, rehearsals and master classes–continuing the jazz tradition of intergenerational mentorship.

The Peer-to-Peer program brings some of the nation’s most talented student jazz musicians into under-resourced public schools across America. The student mentors lead live performances and demonstrations of key jazz concepts, discussions on the history and cultural significance of jazz, and inspiring rehearsals and workshops with the host schools’ jazz bands and choral groups. The Institute conceived this initiative around the simple but powerful concept that students are often more receptive and learn more effectively when their “teachers” are young people their own age. Since launching in 2006, Institute Peer-to-Peer tours have directly impacted more than 250,000 students. With the recent addition of Delaware and Wisconsin, the program has visited schools in 42 U.S. states.

Students from Coast-to-Coast

Over the course of the two weeklong tours, students selected from the Institute’s National Performing Arts High Schools programs in Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Washington, D.C. performed and taught alongside renowned trumpeter and Peabody Institute professor Sean Jones, acclaimed Kansas City vocalist Lisa Henry and GRAMMY Award-winning saxophonist Bobby Watson at schools in Dover and Wilmington, DE and Milwaukee, WI. The members of the Institute’s National Peer-to-Peer Jazz Quintet for the Delaware tour included trumpeter Loren Littlejohn (18) from Dallas; tenor saxophonist Leo Milano (17) from Chicago; pianist José André Montaño (16) from Washington, DC; bassist Camara Dupree (16) from New Orleans; and drummer Matthew Fu (18) from Houston. For the Wisconsin tour, the Quintet consisted of Ebban Dorsey (17) from Baltimore; trombonist Melvin Nimtz (18) from New Orleans; pianist Nathan Tatsuta (15) from Santa Ana, CA; bassist Jack Rota (18) from Dallas; and drummer JJ Mazza (17) from Denver.

Each school visit included an assembly program for the entire student body, followed by in-depth peer-to-peer instruction with students in the school’s music program. The interactive presentations included opportunities for student musicians from each host school to showcase their skills alongside the Institute band.

Building Bridges, Through Music

After an unprecedented two years of life spent adapting to the pandemic, the in-person tours brought a sorely needed human connection back to the target schools. Wrote one school district official, the Institute’s visits “have fundamentally helped all of us remember the value of being together, the importance of community, and the magic of music.”

Another district superintendent commented, “Our students, staff and community walked away with a deeper understanding of how jazz has contributed to our history in the United States. The performance created a catalyst that built bridges across generations, race, gender orientation and religion…this experience has expanded our students’ interest in jazz as a genre.”

A Taste of Things to Come

At the end of each exhilarating week spent sharing their love of jazz with children their own age, the Institute students were eager to carry on with another hallowed tradition of the Peer-to-Peer program–the gig. Both tours concluded with evening performances by the Institute’s National Peer-to-Peer Jazz Quintet at top jazz clubs. In Milwaukee, the Peer-to-Peer Quintet impressed local audiences with two performances at the city’s newest live jazz venue, Bar Centro. The Delaware group capped off its week with a pair of sets at iconic Baltimore jazz club Keystone Korner, which has hosted jazz legends like Ron Carter, Joey DeFrancesco, Kenny Garrett and Dee Dee Bridgewater. The Institute players got an authentic taste of the demands of working as professional musicians as they performed challenging arrangements of jazz standards, original works by the accompanying jazz masters, and their own compositions.

Lisa Henry, who has participated in Institute Peer-to-Peer tours since their inception, captured the formative nature of the touring experience as she counted off the students’ set at Keystone Korner. “It never ceases to amaze me,” she remarked, “how special it is to watch young musicians–young artists–at the very beginning of their take-off. What you’re witnessing here is something very special.”