Interplay Jazz & Arts offers a holistic learning experience for musicians and artists of all ages and abilities to explore and develop their art, creativity, and confidence. The Interplay Jazz & Arts Summer Intensive, held this year from June 19 through 25 in Woodstock, is a weeklong workshop that includes instrumental and vocal jazz, a gospel choir, visual arts, creative writing, storytelling, yoga, and meditation.

What to expect as a participant

Through master classes for all instruments and voice with world-class mentors in creativity, composition, arranging, improvisation, jazz theory, ear
 training, transcription, painting, drawing, creative writing, and storytelling, every student is engaged in mind, body, and spirit. The supportive and holistic learning environment provides opportunities to experience a mix of art forms as well as an intensive focus on the participant’s primary passion.

Instruction from the award-winning, wise, and fun faculty with low teacher-to-student ratios (1:1–1:4) creates a nurturing and intimate learning environment. Faculty and students interact continually by playing music, drawing, writing, dining, and performing together. Interplay provides a non-competitive and supportive intergenerational environment that combines the curiosity and exuberance of youth with the wisdom and experience of age.

What participants have to say

–Interplay’s inclusive, welcoming, holistic community approach to jazz was a privilege to be a part of.

–My week at Interplay is the highlight of my whole year, and I plan my year around it. And you know you’ve found something really special when the faculty says that their week at Interplay is the highlight of their year too!

–It’s astonishing how folks of every age and aspect, every interest and preference come together to make music, all the while losing themselves to the music itself. Totally delightful!

–Interplay opened me up to the full potential of my own creativity and expression.

–It was an inspiring week filled with human connection, music making, and self-reflection.

Jazz Instrumental and Vocal students attend master classes, study music theory, ear training, jazz composition, and arranging, and develop performance skills with faculty members in both small and large ensembles and joint student/faculty performances including jazz combos, big band, and gospel choir. Students rehearse and play in a combo each day to build their jazz repertoire and performance skills and to develop a jazz vocabulary in theory and improvisation classes and through listening to and playing with Interplay faculty and students in nightly jam sessions.

Writers stir up ideas for a year’s worth of creative work or come and dedicate hours each day to works-in-progress in workshops, group and private instruction, solitary writing time, songwriting, poetry jams, and in live jazz venues. Daily workshops offered include “Dig Deep and Fly Free” with instructor Marv Klassen-Landis, a poet, storyteller, and theatre artist who is the writer-in-residence at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and co-founder and performer with Children’s Voices Theatre, and “What’s the Name of That Song” with instructor Reuben Jackson, the host of Friday Night Jazz on Vermont Public Radio since 2012 and a poet whose work is published in 40 anthologies and in a volume entitled Fingering the Keys, which won the Columbia Book Award in 1991.

Visual Artists receive instruction in pen and ink, watercolor, markers, acrylics, mixed media, and photography, and investigate responding artistically to jazz rhythm, tempo, pattern, repetition, musical color, temperature, energy, instruments, and musicians.

Instructor Judy Brook, a watercolor artist, award-winning photographer, poet, and accomplished book artist, helps students experiment and practice in the studio and respond creatively to live jazz in instrumental and vocal jazz lessons, practice sessions, rehearsals, master classes, concerts, and a dance/concert. There will be a student exhibit at the end of the week.

Through the High School Jazz Instrumental Day Camp, students listen to and learn from Interplay’s award-winning faculty in master classes and combo rehearsals for big band performances.

For information on workshop descriptions, schedules, and fees (financial aid is available), visit www.interplayjazzandarts.org. Registrations are being accepted now and class workshop size is limited.

Interplay brings a mix of improvisation, creative play, and collaboration, which are at the heart of jazz, to all its programming. The musicians and artists at Interplay love the synergy created when different art forms encounter, engage, and interact with each other. Interplay also offers shorter workshops, jam sessions, and performances throughout the year.