Teacher connects jazz history to experience

David Wiegand

Kwami Coleman, the new kid on the block at the Jazzschool, is a graduate student in musicology at Stanford who grew up in New York, where his dad was a pianist.

He got his job through inadvertent networking when, at a musicological conference in Quebec, he asked author Scott DeVeaux ("The Birth of Bebop") about the importance of Igor Stravinsky hearing Charlie Parker play live at Birdland.

Flash forward a couple of years and Susan Muscarella is looking for someone to teach the history of jazz from 1920 to the present at the Jazzschool. She contacts DeVeaux, who says he doesn't know of anyone, except for this young guy at Stanford who impressed him at the musicology conference.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at October 12, 2010 1:42 AM
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