The Ravenscroft is hosting its first two concerts in May in support of a Peoria-based non-profit food assistance program for at-risk high school students facing food and housing insecurity.
Performing are student ensembles from the Valley Jazz Cooperative (VJC) alongside Chicago-based saxophonist John Wojciechowski.
The concerts
The first benefit is Friday, May 3, at 7 p.m. featuring a first set from the VJC student seniors playing with Wojciechowski and other area jazz musicians. The second set features the John Wojciechowski Quartet with Wojciechowski on saxophone, Russell Schmidt on piano, Chris Finet on bass and Rob Moore on drums. Tickets range from $16 to $28.
The second concert is a Saturday matinee, May 4, at 2 p.m. in the Ravenscroft Hall featuring all three Valley Jazz Cooperative student ensembles joined by Wojciechowski playing selections from Bill Holman, Thad Jones, Jueun Seok, Billy Strayhorn and others. Tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for students.
The Valley Jazz Cooperative is a jazz ensemble program that teaches high school students jazz improvisation and theory at the Ravenscroft, a musical outreach venue of the Christian-based organization Music Serving the World.
The HART Pantry
Proceeds from both concerts will support the HART Pantry, a Valley-wide nonprofit founded by Ruth Langford dedicated to reaching high school teens lacking access to food, clothing, toiletries and other basic needs to provide support and encourage them to finish high school.
“If you’re hungry, you’re not focusing on classwork,” says VJC Founder Russell Schmidt. “The HART Pantry’s goal is not only to meet those basic needs but also to help young people in school get an education that will help them succeed for decades to come.”
Schmidt teamed with jazz singer Vicki McDermitt who runs a jazz series called Jazz for the Soul which supports a different charity every month. Together, McDermitt and Schmidt use music as a ministry to support the community in a unique way.
“I try to find ministries or charities that are smaller, sometimes family-run or more grassroots where they don’t have a big overhead and working so hard that a lot of time, they don’t have time go out and do a lot of fundraising because they’re too busy,” McDermitt said.
The HART Pantry has supported students in 26 high schools throughout the Valley.
The Valley Jazz Cooperative
The Valley Jazz Cooperative began in 2016 to help committed, passionate music students find joy in playing and learning jazz.
The cooperative offers a college scholarship program, supporting outstanding program alumni through their post-secondary education.
The Valley Jazz Cooperative has three student ensembles: Indigo, Cerulean and Sapphire.
Indigo and Cerulean are big band ensembles, playing music heard in dance halls and large venues from composers like Bill Holman and Duke Ellington. The Sapphire Ensemble, led by Mesa Community College Faculty Member Paul Brewer, is what Schmidt calls an extended combo or “little big band,” a 10-piece group playing songs commonly heard in night clubs and smaller venues from jazz titans like Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis.
Keeping the blues tradition in jazz alive, the three ensembles are named after different shades of blue.
Since its inception, Schmidt has grown the Valley Jazz Cooperative from 10 students to upwards of 42 students.
“Russ brings in these kids and teaches them to work in ensembles,” McDermitt said. “He writes a lot of great arrangements for them that gives them confidence…I love working on anything with him because what he does with kids is just wonderful.”
Guest Artist John Wojciechowski
The concerts on May 3 and 4 feature saxophonist John Wojciechowski, who has spent two decades performing and teaching from Detroit to Chicago with such notable bands as The Chicago Jazz Ensemble, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra and The Detroit Symphony Orchestra among many others.
Wojciechowski performed with Schmidt in the Midwest before they both pursued their own musical and clinical assignments and were reacquainted when Wojciechowski joined as a guest artist for the Arizona State University Jazz Festival.
“John is one of those rare cats in jazz who seems to have developed his left brain and his right brain in parallel,” Schmidt says. “Sometimes people put the creativity in front of everything else, but he is able to be very organized and articulate as a teacher, and then when the tenor sax is in his mouth, he is completely free form in his ability to create spontaneously with other amazing improvisers.”
Wojciechowski is on the music faculty at St. Charles North High School in St. Charles, Ill., and has previously taught at Northern Illinois University and Northwestern University.
Before joining Ravenscroft and founding VJC, Schmidt served as the director of jazz studies at Bowling Green State University and the University of Utah. He served in faculty positions at Northern Arizona University, the University of North Carolina-Asheville and the Eastman School of Music, where he holds two degrees of his own.
“We want to elevate these young creatives and let them know what they have to offer as they express music through improvisation is very worthy,” Schmidt said.
Ravenscroft is located at 8445 E. Hartford Drive in Scottsdale.
For more information about Ravenscroft or the Valley Jazz Cooperative, call 800-785-3318, send an email to events@theravenscroft.com or visit theravenscroft.com.
For more information about the HART Pantry, visit hartpantry.org.
We invite our readers to submit their civil comments on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. Cyrus Guccione can be reached at cguccione@iniusa.org.
By 
