Yale to add more Jazz offerings for undergrads

Yale has been behind the times the last few years in its jazz possibilities for undergrads, and almost non-existent for the grad school of music. However, things are changing: http://music.yale.edu/2016/07/29/dean-robert-blocker-announces-ysm-jazz-initiative/

It’s a start - certainly better than a few years ago when my son was looking at schools and found the following Q and A on the Yale website: “Q: Does Yale have a jazz program? A: No.”

But it’s pretty hard to build a jazz program from scratch unless the school is really ready to devote serious resources to it, and it’s not clear from this announcement that they are. Duffy is a band director, not a jazz specialist, and Escoffery is a wonderful jazz saxophonist but has a pretty active touring schedule, so not clear how much time he’ll be spending on campus. Harvard announced the appointments of Vijay Iyer and Yosvany Terry with much fanfare a couple of years ago, but so far as I can tell, it’s still very much a work in progress. Though the joint program Harvard just announced with Berklee may give their efforts a boost, as top academically minded high school jazz musicians will now be able to see a path to continuing serious pursuit of their jazz studies and performance while at Harvard. I think it will still be a while, if ever, before top academically minded high school jazz musicians will be able to see a path to continuing serious pursuit of their jazz studies and performance at Yale.