Mission and History

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MISSION

To ignite the power of jazz music education and transform lives by fostering creative self-expression, community, teamwork, and diversity.

Jazz Power Initiative (JPI), a non profit, 501 (c) (3) organization, serves over 3100 New Yorkers and visitors annually – students, teachers, artists, seniors and general audiences, ages 8-80+, to promote youth development, and build more creative and inclusive communities through jazz music, theater and dance education and performance.

Led by highly experienced teaching artists who are award-winning jazz, theater and dance professionals, JPI offers multidisciplinary training, scholarships and performance opportunities to New York City youth, ages 8-19, from every economic and social milieu through our “open-door” policy, with extended outreach to students in under-served New York City public schools in Upper Manhattan. We currently engage over 500 students and their teachers annually, providing after-school instruction mainly in Harlem, Washington Heights and Inwood (where our offices are located) and the Bronx.

Our programs include after-school youth masterclasses at the United Palace; our monthly INTERGENERATIONAL JAZZ JAM at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem; local community senior center workshops, and our annual summer institute at Lehman College (CUNY) for teaching artists and educators.

HISTORY

Jazz Power Initiative, formerly The Jazz Drama Program, began as a collaboration between Eli Yamin and Clifford Carlson in 1998.

Though officially incorporated as The Jazz Drama Program (JDP) in December of 2003, The JDP began as an idea through a 1998 “Meet the Composer/New Music for Schools Grant” awarded to jazz composer Eli Yamin and monies from The Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation.

That year saw a workshop production of a jazz musical composed by Yamin and Clifford Carlson.  The resulting effort, When Malindy Swings, based on a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, was a smash success.  National Public Radio’s Jazz Set with Branford Marsalis aired a 10-minute feature on the project nationwide.

This prompted Yamin and Carlson to write four more jazz musicals on their own over the next four years and in so doing, establish a groundbreaking idea in jazz education: to combine the power of experiential learning with story-telling and total immersion in the language and culture of jazz as a potent tool for communication, youth experience jazz across a multi-disciplinary curriculum, as it had never been done before.

The Jazz Drama Program was founded as a corporation in 2003 and received its tax-exempt 501 (c) (3) status in September of 2004.

In 2017, The Jazz Drama Program was rebranded as “Jazz Power Initiative” in order to broaden its scope and appeal and clarify the intent of its mission.