Vincent York's Jazzistry

Mission: To use live performance to teach children and adults the story of jazz and its role in American history and culture.

Since the 1990’s, nationally recognized Jazz saxophone and woodwind player, Vincent York and his band have excited and informed audiences of all ages with his program JAZZistry (Jazz + History + Artistry).

Vincent York’s JAZZistry is a nonprofit organization with an education program that uses live performance by professional musicians to tell the story of jazz from its beginnings 400 years ago in colonial America through today. We have been supported for decades by loyal volunteers. Since our founding, JAZZistry has turned classrooms into musical multicultural time machines, teaching new perspectives about our shared culture and history. Our objective is to help students make a more personal connection to our shared history and to make them more aware of America’s multicultural past.

JAZZistry is a powerful LIVE demonstration of America’s cultural, racial, and musical history through unforgettable music and multi-media primary materials (maps, photos, newsreel clips, etc.), using virtuosi musicians as guides. Auditoriums become multicultural musical time machines, travelling 500 years, crossing four continents: from West Africa and Europe to the New World; from Havana and New Orleans to Harlem; from Joplin and the Blues to RocknRoll; from Ellington to Miles; from Bebop to Hiphop. With memorable music and stories, this interactive program ‘swings’ through history, connecting people to our shared culture and heritage. It showcases the evolution of America’s most unique gift to the world–Jazz and its profound influence on all modern music. In hundreds of school performances, students are integrated into the shows, such as soloists, dancers, marching bands and rappers. Through direct work in classrooms, JAZZistry crosses the curriculum into literature, history, world languages, math and science, enriching students’ understanding of culture, while demonstrating to teachers the power of integrating the Arts to better engage students. JAZZIstry also inspires many students (and adults) to get directly involved in music. JAZZistry’s programs engage students through music, story telling and visuals so they can experience how the musical traditions of enslaved West Africans were integrated with Native American, European and Latin musical traditions to create new musical forms that are uniquely American. Vincent York’s JAZZistry is the ‘swingingest’ way to teach and should be a national curriculum!