The Gold Coast Jazz Society recently had a brush with small screen fame. Eight of its students were invited to film a spot on BECON TV – executive director Pam Dearden gives a first-hand account of the experience…

About a month ago, we got a call from BECON TV (the Broward County Public Schools TV station) to assemble a group of jazz students for a filming of the TV show Teen Talk. The show’s host, Dr. Stephen Goldstein was impressed with the kids and wanted to gather a few for a live jam on the show. We gathered eight jazz students (all of which participated in last year’s First Friday Jazz Jams” or were jazz scholarship winners) and filmed away. Both Stephen and I were thoroughly amazed at the confidence, self-assurance and poise of the kids as they were interviewed and individually demonstrated their instrument.  “They were probably the most creative group of teens of the thousand-plus I’ve interviewed on TV in the past eight years,” Stephen said. “Their ability to improvise on their own and with others was in a class by itself. They were fearless and uninhibited.”

Each student spoke knowledgably about their respective jazz instrument and demonstrated their musical abilities admirably.   When asked to improvise a few bars (in various musical configuration), each one jumped right in and played straight away without hesitation.   We had one of the Jazz Jam musical leaders, Nicole Yarling, on hand just in case the kids needed some improv direction, but the kids proved that they could play quite proficiently with one of the other students leading the way.   Almost every one of the students planned to continue studying jazz in high school, study jazz in college and had hopes of a professional career.   Musically, these kids are well on their way to becoming professional jazz musicians.

We don’t know quite yet when the show will air on BECON, but everyone’s anxious to see the result.   What a thrill to think that, in spite of the preponderance of some pretty distasteful music out there on the airwaves these days, these kids know the difference and want to help preserve and promote America’s original art form – jazz.