I’m working with my friends at Jazz at Lincoln Center on a ten volume set of teacher’s guides to Jazz for Young People. These books and digital downloads will serve as an introduction to jazz music to thousands of students in music classrooms and in community jazz education courses. Lesson plans are by the music educator Sharon Burch and there’s audio and video recordings by Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and classic recordings by jazz giants from history. Starting with Volume 1, this book introduces the music of New Orleans and Jelly Roll Morton. Volumes 2 - 10 will take students through the Swing Era, Bebop, Cool Jazz and Afro-Cuban Jazz.

At first, the idea was to design one cover that could be used for all ten volumes, but in a crafty negotiating ploy, I offered to design 10 covers for the same price as one. I enjoy thinking that the first thing some kids will ever see or hear about Jelly Roll Morton will be my drawing of him playing a piano that’s also a building.