As the Pacific Northwest summer draws to a close and schoolkids tote around their backpacks and newly-acquired band instruments, there’s a group of adults joining them.
Beginning Instruments for Adults, a new weekly class offered at the South Seattle music nonprofit Jazz Night School, gives adults a second chance at learning a wind instrument using techniques and repertoire rooted in jazz.
“It's more common than not for a person to say, ‘Oh, I played the clarinet for a couple of months, but then I quit,’ or ‘Oh, I'm not musical,’ or ‘I sure wish I could play an instrument,’” class instructor Kelly Clingan said.
In August, Beginning Instruments for Adults graduated its first cohort, a group that spent a year developing musical skills, as well as embracing joy, vulnerability and community.
"Practicing being a beginner... and not only feeling like that's okay, but feeling like it's actually really cool and really powerful, has been transformative for me,” student Ashley Miller said.
Closing the access gap
Each quarter, the students of Beginning Instruments for Adults learn three songs by ear using jazz techniques like repetition and call and response.
While learning songs like “C Jam Blues” and “When the Saints Go Marching In,” students gain basic technique on their instruments. They also learn about musical concepts like song structure and improvisation.
“Some students are really comfortable improvising. Other students want nothing to do with it. But everyone's trying it,” Clingan said.
Clingan, a trombonist and educator, previously served as band director at Washington Middle School in Seattle’s Central District and as education director at the nonprofit Seattle JazzED.
While teaching young people, she was struck by the number of parents who mentioned how much they wished they could participate in band class.
“I really truly believe that music is a fundamental human right and I think that our culture, American culture, has made it inaccessible for a lot of people,” Clingan said.
According to a 2019 National Arts Education Status Report Summary, 92% of K-12 students in U.S. schools have access to music education, but only 49% are able to participate due to factors including cost of instrument rentals and academic requirements that de-emphasize the arts.
Notably, additional studies show that even when young people are exposed to music education, musical instrument engagement drops off dramatically in adulthood.
A second chance at music
With this in mind, Clingan conceived Beginning Instruments for Adults last fall and pitched it to Jazz Night School Program Director Tim Carey.
“At Jazz Night School, classes are levels one, two, or three, but they were finding that a lot of people wanted to participate who were not level one,” Clingan said.
As the class launched, Clingan found her students had indeed encountered barriers to music education as kids. For some, it was because their schools didn’t offer music classes or they couldn’t afford instruments or private lessons.
For 65-year-old student Lorraine Roberts, the barrier was physical. Roberts is deaf.
“My dad took me to see Tito Puente in New York when I was 9, and I have been in love with brass and the trumpet specifically since then. I've always wanted to learn how to play it,” Roberts said.
Roberts has a degenerative hearing issue and only recently received a cochlear implant. This new device makes learning an instrument and playing it with others possible in a way her old hearing aids did not.
“The cochlear, I can adjust it to a degree that I can hear everybody else playing and myself playing,” she said.
Roberts briefly played drums as a kid, but Beginning Instruments for Adults represents her first experience playing music with tones, or pitches. It’s also provided her with a deep sense of community that motivates her to practice and improve.
“The people in this class are the most gorgeous, kind, wonderful people I have met,” Roberts said.
Adult learning is hard
Roberts’ classmate, 42-year-old Miller, played cello and sang in choir in high school, but didn’t keep music up in adulthood. During the pandemic, she found herself with extra time to pick up the trombone, only to be left frustrated as she learned on her own.
“Adult learning is hard,” Miller said. “Especially learning an instrument, I can hear all of the things that I'm not doing well.”
This was one of the biggest differences Clingan noticed in teaching wind instruments to adults, as compared to her experience teaching kids: the hurdle of perfectionism.
“Generally, kids are a little freer with their mistakes, I would say. But I think we've created a space where these adults are just as free with their mistakes, and that feels really positive,” Clingan said.
Sure enough, as Miller cheered on her classmates’ musical strides, she found it easier to cheer herself on, too.
The experience has been so positive that Miller, who doesn’t have a car, is happy to ride her bike several miles to class with a heavy trombone strapped to her back — rain or shine. She’s also been inspired to revisit basketball, a sport she loved as a teen but abandoned when she didn’t get recruited to play in college.
Beginning Instruments for Adults taught her that she can still enjoy something without being great at it.
“Whether or not it's my ability to play the instrument, what I bring to [the] community is valuable in itself,” Miller said.
Committed, now
Following the success of this class, Clingan is developing more courses geared toward these adult beginners and others like them.
“I'm not sure I've ever been in a room of people who are so happy to be playing music and having so much fun doing it,” Clingan said.
Along with another year of Beginning Instruments for Adults, Clingan is currently teaching Street Band, which will focus on the New Orleans second line music that these beginners particularly enjoyed.
Looking forward, Roberts and Miller, as well as many of their classmates, plan to continue their journeys with music and phase into some of Jazz Night School’s more advanced classes.
“I'm committed to it now, in part because I've had this experience with these people,” Roberts said.
Beginning Instruments for Adults is offered quarterly. New students can register until the first class of the new quarter, Sept. 24.
