Bop Boo Day by Louise Rogers

Rogers and Peter Eldridge (of New York Voices) and will take place on Thursday, April 12, 2007 at 7:30 p.m., at the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College.

Rogers and Eldridge have joined forces on this concert – which will be an annual event – after Eldridge's mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2005. Rogers was in the 6th grade, in 1976, when her mother was diagnosed with the disease. She lived for another 17 years with Alzheimer’s.

TICKETS:

For tickets and information or to give a donation in the name of the concert, visit www.alznyc.org or call the Kaye Playhouse at 212-772-4448. Tickets may also be purchased at the box office located at 695 Park Avenue in Manhattan. Prices are:

$50 for balcony seating

$100 for orchestra seating

$250 for prime orchestra seating and “Meet the Artists” reception after the concert

ABOUT THE ALZHEIMER’S ASSOCIATION:

The New York City Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association offers critically important support programs and services to the more than 200,000 New Yorkers living with Alzheimer’s – a progressive, degenerative disease that attacks the brain, causing impaired memory, thinking and behavior. Among its many offerings, the Chapter provides a 24-hour telephone Helpline; support groups for caregivers and individuals in the early stage of Alzheimer’s disease; training and education for caregivers and healthcare professionals; and Alzheimer’s Association Safe Return® a program that helps locates individuals with dementia who wander and become lost. www.alznyc.org

What's New:

Watch for new CDs!!

Jazzy Fairy Tales: April 20th, 4 pm

Barnes and Noble CD release party and performance

66th Street and Broadway, NYC

Come Ready and See Me: Spring 2007

IAJE Conference: Manhattan

1 Performance: 11:00 – 11:45 Vocals/kazoo: Louise Rogers, Acoustic Bass: Rick Strong

Hilton

Songs from Bop Boo Day!

“The kids had a lot of fun. The woman who led the songs in the first session, Louise, was amazing! She worked really well with the kids and they loved the songs.”

Kirstin Anderson, music teacher from St. Aloysius

Brearly School, Manhattan: Jan. 19th, 26th, 30th

“Ella Fitzgerald Sang Bop Boo Day!”

Workshop for 2nd graders introducing them to the music of Ella Fitzgerald.

Children will explore the music of Ella Fitzgerald and the jazz greats who influenced her. Students become active participants as they compose their own musical creations in the style of Ella Fitzgerald.

Saturday, February 3rd

Book Fair Great Neck Community School, Long Island

Vocals/Kazoo: Louise Rogers, Acoustic Bass: Rick Strong

3 performances: 11:00 – 11:30, 12:00 – 12:30, 1:00 – 1:30

Performing songs from the CD Bop Boo Day! and the new CD Jazzy Fairy Tales to be released Spring 2007

Jazz Choir Residency: February – April 2007

Abilities! Viscardi School for Physically Handicapped Children

Albertson, Long Island

Jazz Festival at Villanova University: Philadelphia

Vocals/Kazoo: Louise Rogers, Acoustic Bass: Rick Strong

March 11

details TBA

http://www.music.villanova.edu/ click on Chamber Music

Residency: Uniondale, Long Island

Spring 2007 dates TBA

“Ella Fitzgerald Sang Bop Boo Day!”

Elementary school children explore the history of jazz through interactive songs, poems and books becoming active participants as they compose their own musical creations in the style of Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis.

February, 6th

Hempstead, Long Island

Performance: “Ella Fitzgerald Sang Bop Boo Day!”

Through songs, poems and stories, Louise Rogers celebrates the jazz greats who influenced Ella Fitzgerald. Featuring songs from "Bop Boo Day!"

Vocals/Kazoo: Louise Rogers, Upright Bass: Rick Strong

Medical Center Nursery School: Jazzy Fairy Tales!

Jazz for preschool with classroom teacher Susan Milligan

Thursdays, January 18, 25

February 8, 22

March 8, 22

April 19

May 3, 17

Washington Heights Jazz Choir: jazz choir for ages 6 thru 12

Cornerstone Center 189th Street and Bennett Ave, Manhattan

Thursdays 4:15 - 5:15

Winter semester begins Thursday January 18th

Performance March 16th @ 6:00 pm

Endorsements:

I have worked with Louise in schools for four years, and she is an

excellent teaching artist and excellent performer. Her performances are

interactive, and fully engage the students. They learn a tremendous

amount about jazz and jazz artists from her. Her residency work is

outstanding. She works well with the students and teachers, and is

extremely responsible, creative, and sensitive to each child’s needs.

Every school where she has performed and conducted workshops for us has

highly praised her work. Lois Kipnis, FOTA's Director of Arts Education.

“The kids had a lot of fun. The woman who led the songs in the first session, Louise, was amazing! She worked really well with the kids and they loved the songs.”

Kirstin Anderson, music teacher from St. Aloysius

Louise is featured in an article about Jazz Education in January 2007 issue of All About Jazz, New York edition. To view entire article go to http://newyork.allaboutjazz.com/ “Jazz in the Next Generation.”

Louise is also featured in an article titled “The Joy of Jazz Moves Them” in Newsday, Sunday, November 19th 2006

to view article go to http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/music/ny-vitalsigns4979012nov19,0,1292553.story?coll=ny-music-print

BOP BOO DAY! Liner Notes by NAT HENTOFF

The most joyously encouraging way of expanding the audience for jazz I’ve heard of is the work of jazz singer-educator Louise Rogers. Louise works in the Medical Center Nursery School in Washington Heights, New York, where she and classroom teacher Susan Milligan have developed an exhilarating – and fun – jazz curriculum for pre-kindergarten.

On Bop Boo Day you can delight in the essence of jazz for the youngest crowd. The children who join in zestful interplay with Louise Rogers and her husband, bassist Rick Strong, are slightly older here. But the same joy permeates the pre-kindergarten class, too. I can imagine Louis Armstrong or Dizzy Gillespie enjoying this session and asking if they could sit in. Louise and Rick have performed with youngsters in various New York schools, in the city’s parks, at museums, and at the prestigious International Association for Jazz Educators Convention.

When Louise became a mother, she began to realize that like the magic dust of fairy tales, the sounds of jazz can reach and enliven the lives of even very young children. This can start as soon as they can hear. Louise’s discovery of the reach and potential of jazz started with observing her three-year old son connect to jazz. As she recalls:

“The simple arrangements were the ones that had the most impact. He responded to lyrics, not just melody. He liked funny lyrics, kazoos, scatting. Not only was scatting funny, but it was interesting and something that he could copy and create for himself.”

Scatting is a way of improvising using sounds – not words – to make the voice into a swinging jazz instrument. The first, and still matchless, jazz scat singer was Louis Armstrong. He was followed by the brilliant innovator Ella Fitzgerald.

Rogers also discovered that “books came alive for my son when rhythm and simple melody were added”. And, like all jazz players, her son “loved to tell his own stories,” in his own jazz language. Music became personal, very personal to her son. Rogers notes, “He enjoyed immensely these songs to sing on his own. They were challenging and yet singable. And he loves the bass.”

On this recording, the resilient flowing pulse of Rick Strong’s bass reminds me of how Freddie Green, Count Basie’s longtime guitarist, used to explain his job description: “I keep the rhythm wave going.” And the kids get their kicks in their call-and-response interaction with Louise’s singing – and then in their own solo flights of scatting.

Around the country, there are sounds of surprise – including self-surprise – as jazz becomes the educational foundation of what will be a lifelong involvement in music. Kids learn, by being in the music, why jazz has become an international common language. With me, jazz became a natural and essential part of my life when I was eleven years old. (We didn’t have swinging pre-kindergarten classes at the William Lloyd Garrison Elementary School in Boston.) From that age on, I could never get enough of the music – especially at those times when I was down and nothing else could lift me up.

Today’s kids also learn, over time, the stories of Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong and the glorious range of other emphatically individual musicians. These jazz greats, who were so collectively attentive to one another, created the soul of the American experience. They created something so powerful that even dictators like Hitler and Stalin could not exterminate jazz in their own countries.

Telling what it’s like teaching kids jazz, Louise Rogers says, “The look of sheer joy when these children are scatting, improvising with kazoos, or singing the blues about cleaning up their room makes me realize exactly why I’m doing this.”

Louise Rogers and Rick Strong are making a vital contribution to the re-energizing of American education at its base. After all, who wouldn’t want to go to a school where there’s time and room to swing? The continual interaction between kids as they become part of the music are an education in democracy. The late Martin Williams, the premier American writer on jazz, spoke of this educational foundation:

“The high degree of individuality, together with the mutual respect and cooperation required in a jazz ensemble mean that it is as if jazz were saying to us that not only is far greater individuality possible... but that such individuality, far from being a threat to a cooperative social structure, can actually enhance society.”

And it’s also fun to find a common groove.

- Nat Hentoff, author of American Music Is (Da Capo Press)

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