How many conservatories should a jazz musician apply to?

Dear WestOfPCH,

You mentioned earlier that you son is a jazz drummer. My son focuses on the
jazz drum set (& hand drums) but really knows little about what is jazz drumming – his focus has been on classic rock/pop. His long-time drum instructor is quite skillful technically, but the scope of the lessons has been limited). Perhaps you could ask your son for a list of his favorite jazz drum pieces and pass that along to me? Even more interesting to me would be to learn what sub-genres there are in jazz drumming (people talk about “classic” jazz and “contemporary” jazz but I’m fuzzy about what this means esp. for the drummer), and just what collegiate programs focus upon.
Both my son & I are quite ignorant and isolated (he’s the only American in his high school in Beijing). My music background was pretty limited.

Even better might be if we could just put the 2 kids in contact directly.  Is that possible? 

Many thanks for your information and suggestions.

Best!!!

He’s primarily bassist, but plays drums too.

A good band to start to listin would be Snarky Puppy - very modern jazz.

More importantly, focus on the drummes rather than tunes, look for recordings with Elvin Jones, Art Blakey, Max Roach, Philly Joe Jones, Jimmy Cobb, and Billy Cobham.

I am not an expert, but for conservatories that have a reputation of being more modern/progressive - you may want to research:

Berklee
Cal Arts
The San Francisco Academy for the Arts (Newer program, not sure how progressive)
The New School
Thornton has a both a Jazz Studies and Popular Music degrees
Middle Tennessee State University
Los Angeles College of Music.

Other great conservatories/university music programs
Frost
MSM
NEC
Peabody
William Patterson
Sunny Purchase
Hartt
UNT (Big band jazz is at the heart of their program)

bassdadjazz,
I believe earlier you mentioned your son did not have a clear safety. I am the parent of a Jazz Bassist (NEC BM '16 Berklee Global Jazz MSM '17) A safety he applied to because he was told the Bass instructor is excellent is University of Southern Maine. He could have gone there for free basically. And the Bass instructor there is well known and well regarded. Just wanted to throw that out there.