Discover Music | School Engagement in the Arts - 92NY, New York

Discover Music — 92NY Staff, Jennifer Dayton, and teaching artist, Pete Smith, welcome visiting elementary school students with the Hello Song before the performance by Gaida.

Two-time Grammy Award winning jazz vocalist, Samara Joy, performs for public school students at the Kaufmann Concert Hall in 2023.

Students in grades 4 and 5 explore the world’s musical genres through hands-on, in-class sessions led by 92NY Teaching Artists and attendance at live concerts featuring celebrated musicians and composers. The program nurtures in students a lifelong love and appreciation of live performance and the arts.

Each class participating in the program receives:

18 in-person lessons with a 92NY Music Teaching Artist
Attendance at 2 live performances in 92NY’s Kaufmann Concert Hall
Original teaching materials for partnering classroom teachers and a student activity book for each enrolled student
1 Professional Development workshop for partnering classroom teachers

Music Resources

92NY Performance Schedule:

Anat Cohen Quartet
Tue, Mar 5, 11 am
Wed, Mar 6, 10:15 am & 11:30 am

Christian McBride Trio
Tue, May 14, 11 am
Wed, May 15, 10:15 am & 11:30 am

NYC Classrooms

NYC classrooms can register for our in-person program that includes eight sessions with a 92NY Teaching Artist at your school, plus attendance at one of the Gotta Swing! performances. Register by selecting “Hybrid Track Registration” in the registration form. A 92NY staff member will then contact you to confirm the date and time of the 92NY performance that your class(es) will attend.

Classrooms Outside NYC

Classrooms outside NYC can register for our digital-track program that includes eight online sessions with a 92NY Teaching Artist, plus access to the live-streamed Gotta Swing! performance on May 19 at 11:30 am ET. Register by selecting “Digital-Track Registration” in the registration form.

Payment Details

Standard pricing for the Discovery Series is $2,900 per class. To apply for a subsidy, please provide a brief description of your school’s circumstances and need for a partial subsidy via the registration form.

Anat Cohen

Ever charismatic, prolific and inspired, Grammy-nominated clarinetist-saxophonist Anat Cohen has won hearts and minds the world over …

Anat Cohen

Ever charismatic, prolific and inspired, Grammy-nominated clarinetist-saxophonist Anat Cohen has won hearts and minds the world over with her expressive virtuosity and delightful stage presence. As The Wall Street Journal says, “What’s not to love about a young clarinetist and saxophonist who plays everything we love – modern jazz, world music, “hot” New Orleans style jazz – and does it all brilliantly?”

The perennial winner of “Clarinetist of the Year” titles from DownBeat, JazzTimes, and the Jazz Journalists Association, Fresh Air’s Terry Gross credits Cohen with “bringing the clarinet to the world” and The New York Times hails her a “Master.”

Cohen was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, and raised in a musical family, beginning clarinet studies at age 12. While in her teens, jazz captured her imagination, and at age 16, she entered the prestigious Thelma Yellin High School, where she learned to play the tenor saxophone. After high school, Cohen attended the Berklee College of Music from 1996-1998, where she honed not only her jazz chops, but also expanded her musical horizons, developing a deep love for various Latin music styles.

After graduating Berklee, Cohen moved to New York City and began to make her mark on the scene. Cohen has released 11 albums as a leader on her own label Anzic, which was established in 2005. Three releases – Outra Coisa: The Music Of Moacir Santos: a collaboration with guitarist Marcello Gonçalves (2017); Rosa Dos Ventos, a collaboration with Trio Brasileiro (2017); and Triple Helix - Anat Cohen Tentet (2019) – were nominated for Grammy Awards. Cohen has emerged as one of the brightest stars in jazz

Christian McBride

Bassist extraordinaire, composer, arranger, educator, curator and administrator, eight-time Grammy Award-winner Christian McBride has been one of the most important and omnipresent figures …

Christian McBride

Bassist extraordinaire, composer, arranger, educator, curator and administrator, eight-time Grammy Award-winner Christian McBride has been one of the most important and omnipresent figures in the jazz world for 30 years.

Raised in a city steeped in soul, McBride moved to New York in 1989 to pursue classical studies at the Juilliard School. There he was promptly recruited to the road by saxophonist Bobby Watson. Call it a change in curriculum: a decade’s worth of study through hundreds of recording sessions and countless gigs with an ever-expanding circle of musicians. He was finding his voice, and others were learning to listen for it.

In 2000 the lessons of the road came together in the formation of what would become his longest-running project, the Christian McBride Band. Praised by writer Alan Leeds as “one of the most intoxicating, least predictable bands on the scene today,” the CMB—saxophonist Ron Blake, keyboardist Geoffrey Keezer, and drummer Terreon Gully—have been collectively evolving McBride’s all-inclusive, forward-thinking outlook on music through their incendiary live shows.

In 2009 McBride began focusing this same energy through a more traditional lens with the debut of his critically acclaimed Inside Straight quintet, and again with the Christian McBride Big Band, whose 2012 release The Good Feeling won the GRAMMY for Best Large Ensemble Jazz Album. As his career entered its third decade, McBride added the role of mentor, tapping rising stars pianist Christian Sands and drummer Ulysses Owens, Jr. for the Christian McBride Trio’s GRAMMY-nominated album Out Here.

He is also a respected educator and advocate, first noted in 1997 when he spoke on former President Bill Clinton’s town hall meeting “Racism in the Performing Arts.” He has since been named Artistic Director of the Jazz Aspen Snowmass Summer Sessions (2000), co-director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem (2005), and the Second Creative Chair for Jazz of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association (2005).

In 1998 he combined roles, composing “The Movement, Revisited,” a four-movement suite dedicated to four of the major figures of the civil rights movement: Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The piece was commissioned by the Portland (ME) Arts Society and the National Endowment for the Arts, and performed throughout New England in the fall of 1998 with McBride’s quartet and a 30-piece gospel choir. For its tenth anniversary, “The Movement, Revisited” was expanded, rewritten, and revamped to feature an 18-piece big band and four actors/speakers in addition to the gospel choir. It was performed in Los Angeles at Walt Disney Concert Hall and praised by the Los Angeles Times as “a work that was admirable—to paraphrase Dr. King—for both the content of its music and the character of its message.”

Currently he hosts and produces The Lowdown: Conversations with Christian on SiriusXM satellite radio and National Public Radio’s Jazz Night in America, a weekly radio show and multimedia collaboration between WBGO, NPR and Jazz at Lincoln Center, showcasing outstanding live jazz from across the country. With his staggering body of work, McBride is the ideal host, drawing on history, experience, and a gift for storytelling to bridge the gap between artist, music, and audience. He brings that same breadth of experience to bear as Artistic Advisor for Jazz Programming at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC).

Completing the circle is his work with Jazz House Kids, the nationally recognized community arts organization founded by his wife, vocalist Melissa Walker. Exclusively dedicated to educating children through jazz, the “Jazz House” concept brings internationally renowned jazz performers to teach alongside a professional staff, offering students a wide range of creative programming that develops musical potential, enhances leadership skills, and strengthens academic performance. This shared celebration of America’s original musical art form cultivates tomorrow’s community leaders and global citizens while preserving its rich legacy for future generations.

Whether behind the bass or away from it, Christian McBride is always of the music. From jazz (Freddie Hubbard, Sonny Rollins, J.J. Johnson, Ray Brown, Milt Jackson, McCoy Tyner, Roy Haynes, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny) to R&B (Isaac Hayes, Chaka Khan, Natalie Cole, Lalah Hathaway, and the one and only Godfather of Soul himself, James Brown) to pop/rock (Sting, Paul McCartney, Carly Simon, Don Henley, Bruce Hornsby) to hip-hop/neo-soul (The Roots, D’Angelo, Queen Latifah) to classical (Kathleen Battle, Edgar Meyer, Shanghai Quartet, Sonus Quartet), he is a luminary with one hand ever reaching for new heights, and the other extended in fellowship—and perhaps the hint of a challenge—inviting us to join him.

To learn more about 92NY’s School Engagement in the Arts, contact:

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Please note that all 92Y regularly scheduled in-person programs are suspended.