WOODLAND — Woodland High School jazz band students have been treated to a virtual band clinic with Chris Bruya, the director of jazz studies at Central Washington University. With more than 30 years of experience in jazz education, Bruya’s bands have performed at Montreux, North Sea, the 2008 Next Generation Jazz Festival.
Woodland Public Schools music teacher Bryana Steck connected with Bruya and started using materials from his clinics in 2017 to teach students. She reached out to Bruya to see if he would consider teaching a clinic for her students.
“The clinic went incredibly well, with students remaining engaged and attentive, answering Bruya’s questions and coming up with material for the whole class to use in exercises,” Steck said in a news release. “Bruya even gave us a spontaneous demonstration of his own version of Clark Terry’s ‘Mumbles,’ complete with scat-singing into his mic, which raised a round of laughter from the class.”
“This was a fun experience for me,” Bruya said in the release. “What was really great was that the students were prepared and engaged in the subject already, so we could start a more involved level of understanding and develop concepts from there.”
