Sitar Stories
DC Jazz Festival
The DC Jazz Festival Celebrating 10 Years
and Bringing the Love of Jazz to Younger Generations
Roberta Flack Education Program is an arts education initiative that encourages young people to get “jazzed” about learning. Named in honor of the internationally renowned artist Roberta Flack—who was a DC public school teacher and serves as the Chair of DCJF Education Committee—the DCJF Education Program offers free concerts, workshops, and master classes for more than 5,000 young people each year. Programs are held in partnership with Sitar Arts Center, DC Public Schools, the Phillips Collection, Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington, Children’s National Health System, THEARC, and others.
Jazzin’ at Sitar provides year-round weekly instrument training and jazz history sessions for music students at Sitar Arts Center. The course is led by accomplished bassist and jazz educator Herman Burney, professor of music at The George Washington University, and features visiting guest artists including renowned pianist Cyrus Chestnut, along with master classes.
“Herman Burney and the DC Jazz fest partnership class brings the essence of creative thinking and musical intuitiveness to our students’ experience at Sitar. Providing not only an outlet for individual growth in music technique, group collaboration, and artistic communication, the class is phenomenal in its ability to teach students to experiment with their sound, rhythm and technical facility; most importantly it teaches them to be fearless in their exploration of musical form — the Jazz Fest class is awesome!”
~ A. Lorraine Robinson, Senior Director of Programs
For more information about DC Jazz Festival, go to www.dcjazfest.org.