Workshops

Accompanying Jazz Vocalists on Guitar | Will St. Peter

I would like to give a presentation on common practices and techniques for guitarists who are accompanying jazz vocalists. I plan on collaborating with Dr Kate Skinner to show how guitarists can effectively accompany jazz vocalists in various grooves and styles including medium swing, up tempos, ballads, waltzes, bossa novas, and more. 

Body Percussion | Hannah Turner

Be your own instrument as you improvise with your body. Experience body “scales,” uneven rhythms and syncopation. Come ready to move and have fun!

Broadway Jazz | Colleen Bialas and Kaylee Clough

Experience rich dynamic changes and move with a distinct style and a confident stage presence. Don’t forget your jazz hands!

Contemporary | Belle Baggs

Stretch your potential in this contemporary modern class that focuses on spinal expression, musicality, rhythm, and fluidity. Dance to live music and develop individual style.

Creative Movement | Melanie Meenan

Explore movement concepts through guided explorations, improvisational games, and movement creation prompts in this class for all-ages and all movement abilities.

Customize A Tune - Harmonization and Chord substitution | Clay Giberson

Demonstrate different approaches on a jazz standard - diatonic and chromatic.

Dance Conditioning | Hannah Turner

Come work up a sweat with exercises that are based off Pilates, yoga and barre classes. Enjoy moving to the music and learning about healthy practices to support your flexibility, strength, and coordination.

Disco Jazz | Gracie Kennedy and Alina Steichen 

Do you love the throwback beats of Earth, Wind and Fire, The Tramps, and The Bee Gees? If so, come learn some sweet 70s jazz dance moves to groovy tunes!

Hey That's Not Jazz!? Secrets of Arranging Pop Tunes for Jazz Groups | James Miley

When arranging popular songs for jazz ensembles (large or small), it can be all too easy to get caught up in the original version and find oneself "stuck" trying to make it work in a jazz setting without losing the essence of the original recording. This workshop will explore different ways to translate pop and rock into jazz by diving into the details of select successful arrangements (Soundgarden, Lorde, Coldplay, etc) and discussing various ways to uncover jazz and jazz-related elements already present in the music.

Hot Club Jazz | Max Wolpert

Let's explore this strings-forward European jazz tradition. We'll learn a tune by guitarist Django Reinhardt, and take apart a transcription of violinist Stéphane Grappelli. Open to all instruments!

Hip Hop | Vandal Hip Hop Club and Alina Steichen and Kaylee Clough

Come lock and pop to the beat. Don’t miss this highly energetic workshop that will get the rhythm going in your body. Learn the latest steps from this vibrant dance form that is infused with jazz, funk, and down to earth movement.

ICM Guided Listening Session: Carnatic + Hindustani music | Arun Ramamurthy

This workshop breaks down compositional / improvisational forms and structures in Carnatic + Hindustani music. We'll briefly explore historical context before listening to rerious ragas and talas by Masters from each style. Topics covered will include the violin's history in India, onstage interaction between musicians, freedom vs. structure, etc. This session will be an open format, and questions are welcomed.

Improvisation for Everyone: Compelling jazz solos whether you know music theory or not! | Kate Olson 

Have you ever wanted to level up your improvisation skills, but feel like you don't have the music theory background to take really compelling solos? Have you learned all the "right" notes to play but still feel like your solos fall flat? Let's learn to use our ears, active listening skills, and a set of seven easy to master concepts to take consistently exciting solos!

It’s All You: How Your Solo Moves the Big Band Forward | Rob Wilkerson 

Pulling from the melody, arrangement, and pre-planned ideas to create solos that help your ensemble move forward.

Jam Session Ready: Learn a Tune By Ear | Steve Treseler

Jazz is social music, and jam sessions are where musicians meet, learn from one another, and gain experience. We will learn jazz tune through call and response (rather than sheet music) and explore user-friendly approaches for improvising. Bring your instrument/voice, no previous improvisation experience required.

Jazz and Anime | Jeff Kyong-McClain

Jazz and affiliated genres are important components explaining the success of anime in Japan and the world. This session, co-taught by historians Jeff Kyong-McClain and Rebecca Scofield and media scholar Yasheng She, will introduce the connections. After Profs. Kyong-McClain and Scofield introduce the arrival of Jazz in East Asia in the 1920s, and the global success of "Cool Japan" pop culture in the 1980s and 90s and beyond, Prof. She will detail the rise to lofi culture such as the lofi study girl phenomenon today, especially the case of Nujabes, who was a Japanese audio engineer, DJ, composer and arranger best known for his atmospheric instrumental mixes sampling from hip hop, soul, jazz, and ambient music. His work gave certain animated works, such as Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, a transnational identity and continues to shape the sonic identity of anime as an expanding genre.

Jazz Pizazz | Colleen Bialas and Grace Tish

It’s all about rhythm and energy! Immerse yourself and reinforce your sense of dynamics, rhythm and especially syncopation with movement.

Keyboard Voicings: A Functional Approach | Clay Giberson 

Demonstrating how to build chord voicings for songs for solo piano or comping within a group. Using example tunes with functional and chromatic harmony. Considering a linear approach. 2 to 6 note chords. Using chord extensions.

12 Keys to Jazz Fluency | Rob Wilkerson

Bring your horns for a hands-on workshop demonstrating how learning short melodies and jazz vocabulary in all 12 keys can bring your playing to the next level.

Math in the Music Scale | Mark Nielsen 

Have you ever wondered how we ended up with the 12 tones in our chromatic scale? Why divide the octave into exactly 12 steps? Why not 10 steps or 20 steps? And how did we choose from those 12 the seven tones of our diatonic scale? Some surprising mathematics gives the explanation.

Music and the Rule of Law: From the Blues to Hip Hop | David Pimentel 

The Blues reflects a lament of Black America over denials of justice during the Jim Crow era. When the music reached white audiences in the mid-1900s, legal and governmental institutions began to change. Will history repeat itself in the 21st century? As the music (and the message) reach larger audiences, Hip Hop, like the Blues before it, has the potential to become a vehicle for the Rule of Law in American legal institutions.

Music for Two Hands, Poetry for Two Voices | Chris Drangle

This creative writing workshop will explore the connection between time signatures in music and literature. As a pianist might use their left hand and right hand to create different but complementary rhythms and melodies, so too might a writer craft distinct voices within the same poem, leading to dynamic art in both cases. Texts of the workshop will include Bill Evans 1958 recording "Peace Piece," a tiny bit of critical theory from James Wood, and a selection of contemporary poetry. Over the course of the workshop each participant will produce an original piece of creative writing--meter to be determined.

Musical Theatre | Kaylee Clough

Since Pal Joey in the 1940s, musical theater dance and choreography has drawn from whatever dance type supports the music, plot and characters and boosts the spirit of the show. Personalities are enlarged and plots are enhanced. Experience and explore this world as you learn a movement sequence from a known musical.

Performance Anxiety: Play Your Best Under Pressure | Steve Treseler

Do your nerves ever interfere with your performances? Maybe you have your music down in the practice room but fall apart on stage or during an audition. Performance anxiety is very common among musicians, even for professionals. But the good news is performance skills can be practiced—and these are separate skills from preparing music. This workshop introduces actionable strategies drawn from research in performance psychology, including how to down-regulate your nervous system with preperformance routines, switch between "practice mode" and "performance mode," stay focused during performances, combat negativity bias, and more.

Pilates | Victoria Robillard

Proper posture can help improve sound and tone, as well as prevent over-use injuries common in musicians and vocalists. In this all-level Pilates class, learn how to cultivate awareness of your body while focusing on core support, strength, stability, and mobility. No equipment needed; personal mats are welcomed.

Pilates Open Lab | Melanie Meenan

Curious about Pilates? Come visit the Integrated Pilates Movement Lab and learn about Pilates equipment, resistance-based repertoire, private session offerings, and the instructor training programs offered at the University of Idaho. For more information contact pilates@uidaho.edu

Raga + Tala 101| Arun Ramamurthy 

Understanding the Building Blocks of Indian Classical Music 

This workshop will explore the elements of Raga (melody) and Tala (time cycles). Through singing and learning fundamental exercises, we'll learn more about the language of raga/tala, and how they're used for composition and improvisation. I will demonstrate gamakas, ornaments that bring ragas to life; and decode korvais, elegant rhythmic patterns that thread together melody and time.  

Rhythmic Journeys: When U.S. Jazz Men and Women went to Rio de Janeiro, fell in love with Brazil and came back with Bossa Nova | Dale Graden

During the 1950s, creative Brazilian musicians blended traditional Brazilian beats such as samba with variants of US jazz to form Bossa Nova (loosely translated as “New trend”). A key moment in this remarkable history is when a group of US musicians led by Charlie Byrd visited Rio de Janeiro during a diplomatic tour in 1961. Upon their return to the United States, they immediately began recording Bossa Nova songs. The musical world has never been the same! Bossa Nova remains one of the most popular genres in international jazz.

Riff- Improvisation | Corrie Befort

Learn fun improvisational tools that connect listening with moving from dancer/musician Corrie Befort. Even within simple gestures, can your body become as agile as your mind?

Sing Like a HORN Play Like a SINGER | Jamie Shew

Wait. What?! We hear those phrases all the time as singers and instrumentalists but likely don't know exactly what they mean. This workshop will explore the parallels between vocalists and instrumentalists and how you can approach the various concepts while phrasing a melody and improvising. Bring your horn AND your voice!

Shapes and Intervals: Unlocking Jazz Voicings on the Piano | Kate Skinner

A breakdown of jazz voicings for comping. 

So, You Want to Record a Jazz Album? | Jamie Shew

In this workshop, we will demystify the process, timing, resources, expectations, and cost breakdown of recording and releasing your own album.

Stem Heat – Fosse | Jess Hirsch ( Dance)

Come learn the original choreography from the iconic Fosse number, "Steam Heat" from The Pajama Game (Adler & Ross). All levels are welcome!

Swing Dance | Swing Devils

Swing is still here! Have the time of your life learning to swing dance (East Coast Swing/ Shim Sham). Learn how people danced and see why the 30s swing bands survived as you move to the rhythms. If people didn’t flock to the large dance halls during the Depression, the Big Bands of the late 20s and 30s would never have survived with their Swing Jazz. This is your chance to groove to the beat and develop some flair in your steps.

Swing Kids: Music as Resistance in Nazi Germany | Rachel Halverson

The workshop will introduce attendees to how Germans embraced jazz during the Weimar Republic only to have it banned during Nazi period. One group of German youth -- the Swing Kids -- resisted this ban by embracing swing music in defiance of the Nazi regime.

The Music of Poetry / The Poetry of Music | Spencer Young

Continuing and building upon last year's Jazz Fest, this workshop will introduce attendants to the intersections of music and poetry. We'll read some poems influenced by music -- such as “Dream Variations” by Langston Hugues and Patricia Smith's "Hip Hop Ghazal" -- and listen to some music influenced by poetry -- such as “Mad Girl’s Love Song” by Ten String Symphony. Then, through discussion and practice of artistic tools that both musicians and poets use (repetition, meter, rhyme, etc.), workshop participants will create their own musically-derived poems.

Western Swing Workshop | Max Wolpert

Let's explore this strings-forward American jazz tradition. We'll learn tunes by the great fiddlers Eck Robertson and Bob Wills, and practice improvisation yee-haw style. Open to all instruments!