Courses for BGJI Students

The BGJI curriculum is composed of ensembles, workshops, private study, and interdisciplinary seminars, and is designed to build a community of creativity. A sampling:

The Danilo Pérez Performance Lab

Hands-on music laboratory focusing on the historic and creative development of global jazz, from Africa to Europe and the Americas. The lab will focus on creativity and finding your own voice, technique, improvisation, and ensemble playing. Taught by Danilo Pérez.

Global Jazz Ensembles

Performing groups that focus on innovative improvisation and compositions emphasizing global jazz influences, rhythms, and folklore. These classes are sections of the Small Band Jazz ensembles offerings.

Harmonic Considerations in Improvisation 1

An in-depth historical analysis of the central improvisational streams in jazz and principal jazz innovators. Taught by Allan Chase.

Creativity and Expression in the Arts

Musical and liberal arts pedagogies fuse as students explore the artistic process and its connection to other mediums of expression, including the performing and visual arts. 

Global Jazz Forum

A weekly seminar for all BGJI students. It will be a forum for special musical projects, BGJI artists-in-residence, faculty workshops, and special topic presentations from the BGJI faculty and artists-in-residence.

Directed Study in Improvisation

One-on-one weekly lessons with special topics in improvisation techniques and harmonic considerations, taught by BGJI faculty and artists-in-residence.

World Percussion for Nonpercussionists

This is a course for non-percussion principals focusing on binary and ternary rhythm structures from Ghana, Brazil, Cuba, and India. Includes hands-on playing of ensemble instruments, singing traditional songs, and developing independence using harmonic time.

Music and Social Activism

A weekly class that explores the multidimensionality of the experience of music, from biological responses to music to the different civic and political movements that have utilized music as a tool for social change in different regions of the world. Music and Social Activism studies music from many different perspectives and how music is experienced in a diverse global setting.