Wynton Marsalis gives some personal instruction to Normandy High School senior Ikeila McCray, 17, during workshop for the school's jazz band on Friday, Oct. 3, 2014. Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra worked with the Normandy band and performed for students in the audience. Photo By David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com
By Elisa Crouch ecrouch@post-dispatch.comWELLSTON • The jazz great held his trumpet as he moved among members of the Normandy High School Jazz Ensemble Friday, coaching them on swagger.
“You’ve got to play your part with feeling,” said Wynton Marsalis, a nine-time Grammy award winner. “We’re not playing our parts with enough abandon.”
This was no ordinary band practice.
In fact, it was a joint performance.
It unfolded inside the auditorium of Normandy High School, where hundreds of students from across the school system packed inside to hear Marsalis and members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra play Count Basie and Duke Ellington pieces alongside the high school jazz band.
And it unfolded in a building where swagger and good news have been in short supply.
On the first day of school, a moment of silence was held to honor Michael Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old who was shot and killed by a Ferguson police officer just eight days after he graduated from the school.
The auditorium was the scene of public forums last year after about a quarter of the district’s children transferred to higher performing schools under a state Supreme Court ruling that allowed students from unaccredited districts to leave. Normandy High students feared their north St. Louis County school district would go bankrupt. Now their school system operates under state oversight.
read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/234e1977-6fb9-51f5-a5ba-f1020b76569d.html
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