The Great American Songbook Foundation’s nationwide application process for its 2018 Songbook Academy summer intensive program is under way. The music and performance program for high school students is led by Foundation founder and five-time Grammy Award nominee Michael Feinstein.
The weeklong Songbook Academy is the only high school intensive in the U.S. focused on jazz standards and classic Broadway and Hollywood songs, known as the Great American Songbook. The academy is scheduled July 21 to 28 at the Songbook Foundation’s headquarters, the Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel.
U.S. high school students are invited to submit videos with performances of two contrasting songs from the Great American Songbook genre. Submissions are evaluated by a panel of music educators and industry professionals who provide written feedback to every applicant. The 2018 application deadline is March 25.
Forty students nationwide are selected each year for this opportunity to participate in workshops and masterclasses and receive mentoring from music industry professionals.
“These young peoples’ lives are forever changed by the experience, and they stay bonded to each other,” Feinstein stated in a press release. “Whether they become professional musicians or not is not the point. The goal is just to give them the joy of experiencing this music, and the eloquence and beauty of the emotions and feelings that are expressed in it and to see what it can do for the soul and the spirit.”
For more, visit TheSongbook.org.
