The Learning English Through Jazz Initiative, Liaoning
and Shandong Provinces, China (2010-2011)
I returned to Europe in 2009, after starting a band program at Shorter University (near Atlanta). With my son out of high school, it was a
good time to reconnect with Bucharest and finish projects started years before. To make the relocation feasible, (my wife) Sarah and I
accepted temporary employment at a prep school in a northern suburb, where I was assigned to their International Baccalaureate program
as a certified instructor.
When Tom wasn't teaching English through jazz, he often helped create and/or guest conduct youth wind bands throughout Liaoning and Shandong Provinces (2011).
At the same time, I worked closely with the Serbian Academy of Music (Belgrade), where great things had occurred during my last Fulbright residency. The goal there was to facilitate a (promised) jazz studies program. I had excellent rapport with the dean, but in 2010, he was
dispatched in favor of someone less interested. Subsequently, the installation was pushed back.
Suddenly, I had to contend with the unexpected. So, my wife and I (impulsively) took on an experimental English instruction project at a
public elementary and high school near Shenyang (Northeast China, later extended to Shandong Province/ 500 miles south). It was dizzying
activity… completely unforeseen, but followed through just the same.
Tom and Sarah Smith coordinating their regional English speaking competition (Benxi Prefecture: 2010).
Basically, our only requirement was to improve spoken English, and we could use any method as long as it was successful. Having never left
music, I wondered if there was a possibility for jazz.
Then I found it.
As a long-time brass instructor, it was my habit to observe tongue placement. I soon noticed that Mandarin required a receded tongue
detrimental to English. Then, I realized scat singing would solve that problem, because it used the applicable syllables of conversational
English. Soon-after, I turned my classes into jazz events (accompanied by Aebersold recordings and my trombone) and the students noticeably improved. While engaged in that adventure, I recalled days in Bucharest untangling Romanian scat, then observing how native language
affected syllabic tonality and rhythmic spontaneity. For example, Mandarin doesn’t reference the short ‘i’, which creates unique accents in
their scatting. Other differences are found in the scatting of Latin speakers (upfront tongue), and Slavs (more receded).
Following my epiphany, I taught the method to Sarah and it quickly worked for her, meaning we had discovered a different kind of jazz
education. This was followed by television interviews and invitations to demonstrate our method to other schools.
Ella Fitzgerald taught me English.
Soon, word of our Jazz/English method spread to Sean Stein, (American Consulate General in Shenyang), who then shared it with national Chinese universities. A few months later, the Dean of Arts at Ningbo University heard about our activities, and offered me a three year
contract to formalize Chinese jazz education. It was an amazing turn of events.
US Consulate General Sean Stein was an enthusiastic supporter of Tom's 'English Through Jazz' initiative, and diligently promoted it.
Nowadays, the syllabic method Sarah and I introduced to Liaoning and Shandong Provinces is used by countless Chinese students... incorporated as part of their English diction readings (although not always with a music backing track).
For his educational contributions in creating the 'English Through Jazz' Initiative and founding an official university jazz curriculum, Tom was awarded China's Camellia Prize.
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