When any form of Israeli talent comes to New York, it’s a chance for all of us here to shlep nachas. But when the talent is in the form of high school jazz musicians, who are clearly teetering on the edge of genius… well, it’s hard to keep the excitement in!

Read about Thelma Yellin’s April Quintet in the article below, from the Jewish Week.

April Is The Coolest Month
Randi Sherman

Amir Bresler plays the drums with his shoes off, the music so much a part of him that it resonates from his toes to his palms as they grip the drumsticks. It is the same for the other four members of the April Quintet: Roy Harmon on trumpet, Hod Moshanov on piano, Ital Shahar on bass and Dean Tsur on saxophone.

The quintet’s musicians answered the call of jazz three years ago when they enrolled at the Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts near Tel Aviv. They answered it again by traveling to New York this week to perform at the prestigious International Association for Jazz Education conference, which runs from Jan. 10-13.

In addition to the IAJE performance, the April Quintet is running a mini-tour while in New York, with performances or jam sessions at the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts, Bard High School Early College, Makor and P.S. 67 in Spanish Harlem.

Their first stop after a long flight from Israel was the so-called “Fame” school, LaGuardia High School, home to their American counterparts. Showing off their stuff, LaGuardia’s Junior Jazz Band played “The Mooch” by Duke Ellington and some mambo tunes. The face of Ellington himself, along with others in the jazz pantheon — Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie — looked on approvingly from posters on the walls.

Still weary from their trip, the members of April Quintet rose for their turn, an impromptu battle of the bands. A look of exhaustion glazed over their faces until they brandished their instruments with flair, bringing them and the LaGuardia students to life.

“It’s great to know that somebody on the other side of the world is doing what we’re doing” and loving jazz as we do, said Kevin Blancq, jazz director at LaGuardia and director of the All-City Jazz Band of New York.

When the class ended and a free period arrived for the band to stop and eat, its members declined the initial invitation. They don’t eat; they practice. When hunger took over, they gave in, and had some time to talk with The Jewish Week.

The group came together a year ago, formed to perform in festivals and the IAJE conference, said saxophonist Dean Tsur. The ensemble was so new that they didn’t even have a name, so they chose April because that was the month they had to send their demo to the IAJE judges.

They perform mainly their own tunes, composed by pianist Moshanov and trumpeter Harmon. The band won the International Competition for Original Composition Performance with Harmon’s “Gazlan.”

They all love performing, but Tsur puts it best. “It’s calming,” he said. “A way to connect to yourself.”

Thelma Yellin High School is located in Givatayim and is the only arts high school in Israel not connected to a particular municipality; it draws students from all over Israel. Like LaGuardia, auditions are required, but unlike their American counterparts, students must pay tuition. Thelma Yellin has 600 students where LaGuardia has 2,500, and Thelma Yellin’s jazz department boasts 80 over LaGuardia’s 60. Other disciplines include classical music, dance, theater, film and visual arts.

Students in Thelma Yellin’s jazz program learn ear training, arranging and harmony, the history of jazz, improvisation and ensemble playing. The school has 18 to 20 ensembles, including one big band and various combinations. The head of the jazz department, Yossi Regev, began teaching at Thelma Yellin 12 years ago. This will be the fifth consecutive year that Regev has brought an ensemble from the school to perform at the IAJE conference, something no other school can claim, Regev said.

One of the benefits of Thelma Yellin is its ability to bring these burgeoning musicians together, said Tsur. “It’s the chemistry, people all from other places coming together” that makes the experience, he said. Some of the students travel 30 miles or more to get to school every day; there are no dormitories. Another student travels nearly 80 miles daily from a town on the border of Lebanon.

The boys were all inspired at a relatively young age, making the choice to attend Thelma Yellin easy. Harmon began his musical bent with the piano at age 5 and switched to trumpet at age 10 after hearing recordings by jazz icon Wynton Marsalis. Shahar started playing electric guitar at age 14, switching to acoustic bass to play jazz. Five years ago, Bresler’s father asked him about playing drums, “and the rest was history,” he said. Tsur’s parents were huge jazz fans, and he began playing saxophone at age 10. Moshanov began playing jazz piano at age 5.

“My brother had a keyboard with drum sounds; I thought that was it,” he said. “My mom gave me lessons to see what you really did with it.”

Returning to Blancq’s classroom to meet LaGuardia’s Senior Big Band, the guys from Thelma Yellin and Regev, who accompanied them on their trip to the States, were treated to a performance of “Snibor” by Billy Strayhorn and “ETA” by Bobby Watson, performed by LaGuardia’s IAJE ensemble, which was scheduled to perform with saxophonist Watson on Wednesday. The April Quintet followed with “Mr. C.C.,” one of Hod’s compositions, which seemed to wake them, Shahar’s shoulders dancing with the bass as LaGuardia’s drummer studied Bresler’s every beat on the drum set.

Afterward, the students jammed together, a din of tuning giving way to beautiful, swinging music. The woodwind section stopped playing momentarily to admire Harmon’s trumpet playing. Music became the great equalizer, their common language.

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