“Chops” Trailer:

What are they: A high school jazz ensemble from Florida coming together to prepare for the prestige Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition and Festival.

Synopsis: This documentary primarily follows a jazz band from Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Florida on their journey to the Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition and Festival and winning the competition as well.

Highlight: During the actual festival/competition when the bands perform or whenever a student is performing in the movie. The amount of talent is amazing. The Dixieland combo Douglas Anderson pulls off during the competition.

After watching this video, “Chops” gave me a rejuvenated feeling about jazz music and how much fun it was to be a part of an ensemble such as that back in my younger days. I was most impressed with the dedication and talent these students possessed and it definitely made me jealous. Wynton Marsalis said in the video that jazz music shows that “it’s alright to be me.” To him, jazz music is “celebrating creativity.” He’s right! What other genre of music allows you to be just that? Improvisation is all about you and how you feel in the moment when you’re performing. For jazz music, there is no right or wrong. To sum it all up, in order to gain a love for music and performing in a program, jazz band can do just that. There are just three factors I think you need to have which are: a nurturing environment, a sense of community, and exposure.

Nurturing environment. I’ve heard it before that if you do not have a nurturing environment, then learning cannot take place. The teacher must be able to establish his or her classroom as a safe haven where learning can take place through risks and mistakes. In the movie, the director of the jazz ensemble, Ace Martin, came across as a strict guy that I first got bad vibes from. He laid down his rules immediately on the first day and corrected students to what he wanted them to be. The students responded almost immediately, but eventually grew to respond to his demands. Mr. Martin worked his students hard and the students met what he was asking of them. When the ensemble was invited to the Essentially Ellington Competition, it was great to see Mr. Martin’s turn-around behavior because he was so excited for his group. When the teacher is excited, the students can feel it. Actually it should be, whatever the teacher is feeling, the students react to it as well. To create the sense of love for music, the teacher must always be willing to support and encourage his or her students in the learning process.

A Sense of Community. The students in the movie said it best that Douglas Anderson was like one big family. It was great to see when the students were accepted to the festival/competition that the other faculty were supportive as well, even though the movie showed only one other teacher, it was great to see the community the school had built. This gave the students a sense of pride and it made them even more excited for the music that they were going to be learning and performing at the festival. Another way a community can help create a love for music is having peer-to-peer feedback. It’s one thing to hear from a teacher on how you did. It’s another thing to hear from a peer. I don’t know what it is, but I feel that when you’re performing in front of your peers, it can be a bit nerve wracking than performing in front of a teacher. By bringing that into a classroom, it gives the students ownership over the learning that is done during that time. It would be the teacher’s job to monitor what is going on and it can certainly help create a love for performing since students will want to improve for their peers.

Exposure. This word can mean two different things and I see both of those definitions as helpers to creating the love. The first meaning I see exposure as is showing students different genres of music. Jazz is just one, but what about classical, funk, or even hip-hop? How can we create a love for music when we just focus on one genre of music? It would get boring real fast. The students need to be shown everything! The other definition I see exposure as is performing in various places. In the movie, Mr. Martin had his students perform at the Lakeside Jazz Festival. I thought that was really clever considering it was close to the time when Essentially Ellington was about to take place. I felt like it was a sort of warm-up before the big show, but in any other case, it’s just fun to perform for everyone to hear how much you have achieved. It’s even more fun when you’re performing with a close group of people who have become your friends. Performing so many times also helps students grow accustom and helps get rid of nerves a bit so there can be more fun on stage than anxiety.

“Chops” was a wonderful movie and up lifting. It made me find my love for jazz music again and wish that there had been more opportunities for jazz clarinet during my years in high school. It would also be great to expose students to the jazz world because it allows for so many risks to be made and there is no right or wrong answer.

I highly recommend this video, it's on Netflix and well worth the watch. The students from DASOTA are very entertaining and an example of what hard work can do.