BroadStage Launches Three-Year Artist in Residence Program featuring Stanley Clarke
Jazz legend Stanley Clarke appointed as Artist in Residence and collaborator with BroadStage, Santa Monica High School and Santa Monica College in a brilliant program bringing added opportunities to Santa Monica’s tradition of music education excellence.
Multi Grammy-award winning bassist, recording artist, composer and producer Stanley Clarke has partnered with BroadStage in launching a three-year Artist in Residence program. Co-designed by Clarke, BroadStage Activations staff, and music department faculty from both Santa Monica College (SMC) and Santa Monica High School (Samohi), this impressive residency program has several components.
First, as Artist in Residence, Clarke will mentor student musicians from the Jazz 1 Band and Jazz 1 Combo of Samohi, the SMC Jazz Ensemble and the SMC Applied Music program. Clarke will work with these ensembles during their respective rehearsals for a combined total of 12 sessions during the Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 semesters. Each ensemble will then perform their own concert that will include music that Clarke has either composed or recorded throughout his stand-out career.
Clarke will give two Artist Talks, one on Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023 at 11:15 a.m. and one on Tuesday, March 19, 2024 at 11:15 a.m. Both will take place at SMC’s Music Hall, and are free and open to the public.
Clarke himself will also perform twice at The Eli and Edythe Broad Stage, based at the SMC Performing Arts Center. He will perform alongside Grammy-award winning Pianist Hiromi on Saturday, Sept. 23 at 7:30 p.m. This concert will mark the official beginning of Clarke’s position as BroadStage Artist in Residence and also kick off the 2023/2024 BroadStage season. Clarke will perform a second concert on Saturday, March 30, 2024 with his band, 4EVER.
An end goal of the three-year residency program is to launch an intergenerational jazz festival in Santa Monica. The annual festival will be presented by BroadStage, curated by Clarke and feature globally renowned jazz artists in addition to local and next-gen jazz performers, including the Samohi and SMC student musician ensembles. An initial, smaller scale version of the festival will happen in year two of the program with the full-scale event debuting in year three.
The first mentoring session of Clarke’s residency took place after school on Monday, September 19 at Samohi with the Samohi Jazz Band 1 under the Direction of Tom Whaley. Clarke was introduced to the students by Whaley, who is also the Visual & Performing Arts coordinator for the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District. Clarke started the session by looking around the room at the students and saying “I’m happy you are musicians. It makes the world a happier place.”
Whaley, an accomplished trombone player, lead the ensemble rehearsals with trombone-in-hand, playing charts along with the students so he could exemplify song and genre styles in real time as they all played. This first session with Clarke was only the second time this group had performed together this year, and included many students who had not been in a jazz ensemble before. Whaley had them work on the iconic Chic Corea composition “Spain” on which Clarke played bass for the original recording.
Clarke gave instruction and insight about inflections and musicianship specific to playing this tune. He stood side-by-side with the student bass player and coached him, even easing in momentarily to play bass himself as the ensemble played. Clarke gave positive feedback and hands-on examples to the rhythm section as Whaley continued to teach and run through the more difficult sections of the song. It was a seamless and natural process between the two of them.
Clarke then went to the SMC Jazz Ensemble rehearsal led by Director Keith Fiddmont.
This is an intergenerational ensemble made up of first-time college student musicians, students 25 years and older, and seasoned music professionals. Fiddmont, a professional musician with a noteworthy career, led the group while he played soprano sax from the conductor's position in front of the ensemble.
Clarke listened and nodded his head to a few songs before he gave comments and suggestions, sitting in the rhythm section with the student musicians during the remainder of the rehearsal.
Rob Ballis, Artistic and Executive Director of the BroadStage, believes jazz has been in the DNA of BroadStage since day one. He and Ilaan Mazzini, Director of Programs and Activations at BroadStage have been dedicated to make this Artist in Residence program with Clarke a priority and a signature of the organization that brings an outstanding opportunity to our city’s acclaimed music education program and to our community.
For more information about the free Artist in ResidenceTalks, go to:
