TEACHERSTOTEACHERS
LANGUAGE, TECHNOLOGY, MATH, AND SCIENCE EXCHANGE
American Councils is excited to take you to the Kennedy Center on Friday, March 28th,
for a jazz performance. Remember to bring your cameras as one of the more spectacular
views of the National Mall can be seen from the balcony.
The Kennedy Center
The Kennedy Center, located on 17 acres overlooking the Potomac River in
Washington, D.C., is America’s living memorial to President Kennedy as well as the
nation’s busiest arts facility, presenting more than 2,000 performances each year.
Touring Kennedy Center productions and its television, radio, and Internet broadcasts
reach millions around the world. As part of the Kennedy Center’s Performing Arts for
Everyone outreach program, hundreds of free performances are offered each year
featuring national and local artists; these include early-evening concerts on the
Millennium Stage, dozens of performances during the annual Open House Arts
Festival, and daily concerts of seasonal music in December as part of Holidays at the
Kennedy Center. Since 1999, the Millennium Stage performances have been broadcast
live over the Internet and digitally archived on the Kennedy Center’s website.
The Millennium Stage
Since its inception in March 1997, the Millennium Stage has presented more than 26,000
performers from all 50 states and more than 40 different countries to nearly 2 million
people--some of whom are experiencing the arts for the first time. Launched as part of the
Performing Arts for Everyone Initiative, some 400 people stop by every day to catch
performers at 6 p.m.
The second birthday celebration of the Millennium Stage on April 1, 1999 marked the
Kennedy Center's arrival on the cutting edge of art and technology as performances
appeared on the Internet for live hour-long broadcasts. So if you can't make it to the
Kennedy Center but can make it to your computer, you can watch artists live on the
Millennium Stage every day at 6 p.m. ET. If you miss a performance, you can find it in
our broadcast archives using the Millennium Stage Explorer.
In April 2002, Millennium Stage partnered with the American Folklife Center at the
Library of Congress (LOC) to develop Homegrown: The Music of America. From April
to November each year, outdoor concerts of the best performers this country has to offer
in specific regional genres are performed once a month on Neptune Plaza at the LOC.
The Millennium Stage is also a significant participant in various local festivals, including
the National Cherry Blossom Festival and the Smithsonian Institution’s Folklife Festival
on the National Mall. And no Kennedy Center festival--such as AmericArtes, Mary Lou
Williams Women in Jazz Festival, the Holiday Celebration, Prelude Festival featuring the
annual Open House Arts Festival--would be complete without performances on the
Millennium Stage.
Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead
Betty Carter's Jazz Ahead at the Kennedy Center identifies outstanding, emerging artists
and brings them together under the tutelage of experienced artist-instructors who coach
and counsel them, helping them to polish their performance, composing and arranging
skills.The program was originally developed by Carter in 1993 at 651, an arts center in
Brooklyn, and the first concert was presented at the BAM Majestic Theater.
In 1997, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Dr. Billy Taylor, the
Center's artistic advisor for Jazz, invited Carter to bring Jazz Ahead to Washington. On
April 15, 1998, a delighted audience in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall heard the
results of Carter's intense week of work with a group of 20 young jazz artists. Betty
Carter's Jazz Ahead had a new home and Carter was filled with hope for the future of the
program. After Carter’s death in September 1998, Dr. Billy Taylor and the Kennedy
Center decided to continue her legacy by making the Jazz Ahead program, with the
principles Carter laid down as the foundation, an annual event.
Betty Carter founded Jazz Ahead as a vehicle to bring new life into jazz and teach the
most promising fledgling artists what she knew. About her decision to create the
program, Carter once remarked, "It is a concern of mine that jazz in its classical sense
stands a chance of being placed in the background of the musical spectrum. Regardless
of the fact that jazz is considered one of the first of America's true musical statements, it
cannot survive simply on reputation alone. Creativity and explosive musical minds built
this music with the sweat of what inspired them. It isn't the lack of explosive talent that
burdens us. We need to create a wider pool for young talent to emerge, to be seen, and to
be heard, in order to help them create viable careers of their own."