DownBeat October 1990 [antikvár]

BERKLEE SCHOLARSHIPS FOR WIND PLAYERS Berklec College of Music has long been recognized as a leader in preparing brass and woodwind players for careers in today's professional music. Our outstanding alumni include artists such as Ernie Watts, Branford Marsalis, Richie Cole, Sadao Watanabe, Ciaudio Roditi, and Donald Harrison. The Annual Winds Scholarship Awards Program is a competition which last year awarded over $100,000 in scholarship assistance. National scholarship auditions will take place this winter in January and February in: Boston Chicago New Orleans San Francisco and other major cities. Talented wind players are encouraged to apply for these Berklee scholarships—including four-year ftill tuition scholarship awards— which have been established to recognize brass and woodwind players of exceptional promise. For more information contact the Office of Admissions, 1140 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02215, or call 1-800-421-0084. In MA call 617-266-1400. Begin your career in music with a Berklee Winds Scholarship. Berklee COLLEGE OF MUSIC Where carccrs in music begin. on the beat SAVE THE NEA by Dr. Billy Taylor Editor's note: The National Endowment for the Arts is in a calfight. Since last fall, conservative Sen. Jesse Helms has crusaded against the Endowment for funding works that could be considered blasphemous or obscene. At presstime, the issue was scheduled for Senate debate in September, mat's at stake? Millions of dollars worth of arts funding (including music) and the NEA's survival. To discover what can be done, we asked Dr. Billy Taylor, the esteemed composer, educator, jazz proponent, and former member of the National Council for the Arts. For reasons known only to himself, Sen. Jesse Helms has chosen to attack something that has worked very well for the past 25 years. During that time, the National Endowment for the Arts has processed well over 80,000 grants to boost talented artists and take the arts to the broadest spectrum of the U.S. population. Sen. Helms has chosen to focus on 20 grants-that's 20 grants out of 80,000-in his efforts to cast doubt on everything the Endowment has accomplished. The Endowment is fighting for its life, unnecessarily. It has a tremendous record and has served the country well on one of the smallest budgets in the Federal government. In the jazz worid, I can attest firsthand that for every dollar the government gives, at least five more are generated. And, I'm sure that number can be multiplied across the board. Through NEA grants, groups like the National Jazz Service Organization, the International Association of Jazz Educators, and JazzMobile provide valuable services. Programs like Meet the Composer have helped stimulate jazz performances. Dance companies have been able to commission original scores. And, the music has been promoted from Manhattan to Detroit to Nacogdoches, Texas. Without NEA funding, many of FRANK'S DRUM SHOP New Location 222 S. JEFFERSON CHICAGO. IL 60606 1-312-606-0707 Dr. Billy Taylor these programs, and sources, will be gone. Unfortimately, it doesn't end there. As soon as Sen. Helms made allegations against the Endowment, some major corporations as well as city and state governments blinked. The Senator had handed them a reason to curtail their arts fiinding. An NEA grant has always been a powerful endorsement that can be used to attract other private and public money. "As a musician or music fan, take five minutes and contact your local legislators . . . make your voice heard." Congress is already debating the issue and preparing to make some difficult decisions. But it's not too late. And, you can make a difference. As a musician or music fan, take five minutes and contact your local legislators. Write them, call them, or organize petitions, but make your voice heard. These are the people you can influence. And, they will be voting on the NEA's future. Obviously, the arts will not disappear if the NEA dissapears. But, before the NEA came into existence, our arts delivery system in the United States was not a strong, unified force. We lost a number of excellent artists and opportunities because we lacked a national focus that the NEA has provided. When I travel around the worid, one of the things people often teU me is how eloquent tlie jazz artist is in terms of speaking through his or her music to the theme of personal freedom. It is incumbent to every person involved in the music in any form—as a player, listener, concert-goer, music executive—to exercise their personal freedom and say that the art form should be presented in a more conscious, more effective way. And, that can't be done if we lose the National Endowment for the Arts. DB 6 DOWN BEAT OCTOBER 1990