A Look Back at 2015

Happy New Year’s everyone! To celebrate the start of 2016, we thought that we would share a few fun facts and accomplishments on Teen Jazz in the last year. Towards the end of 2015 we took a bit of a break – Teen Jazz Founder Shannon Kennedy was quite busy on tour promoting her new …

Mariea Antoinette Straight from the Harp Review

In an industry prevalent with saxophonists, guitarists, and keyboardists, it’s not often that you come across instrumentalists of a different sort, but Mariea Antoinette is one such musician paving her own way as a jazz and soul harpist. On September 25, 2015, with the release of a special edition of her Billboard Top 5 charting …

Groove LTD Releases Debut Album “First Class”

Teen Jazz Host Shannon Kennedy and guitarist U-Nam are proud to announce the release of their debut album as Groove Ltd. The new project, “First Class” features guests including Myron, Maysa, Jonathan Fritzen, Paulhino da Costa, Michael White, and many more. The first day of its digital release saw the album attain a #1 place …

Why Do Young Clarinet Players Play Flat?

This is a guest post from Rheuben Allen, taken from his site with permission. Why do young clarinet players play flat? Elementary school and middle school students who choose to play the clarinet often have an issue playing in tune. But they’re not necessarily to blame. The manufacturers of many student clarinets sell instruments with …

Build Your Music Brand Platform Online

Now, more than ever before, your next fan is more likely to discover you and your music online than they are to find out about you at a show. Social media now dominates the music industry, and new platforms like TikTok have a greater influence on who discovers your music than anything else. This is …

There Are No Shortcuts

Amongst the language learning community, there are a lot of products marketed to learners as being the newest and fastest way to learn a language. The problem with this, is with how they’re defining what it means to have learnt a language. Is this to fluency? To basic conversation ability? It is rarely clear just …

How to Learn Something from Any Situation

When we make the transition from school to the real world, maintaining our learning curve can present a challenge. In school we’re often handed things that we need to work on in the form or homework or assignments, and so we rarely have to think about the next step. But what happens when you no …

13 Things No One Told Me About Being A Professional Musician

I began my career as a professional musician while in high school and I’ve learned more outside of school these past few years than I did in all of my time in school (and I went to school through a Master’s degree). Some of the lessons that I’ve learned were much harder than others, but …

A review of Al Di Meola’s Elysium

With more than four decades in music, three gold albums, and more than six million record sales worldwide, Al Di Meola is ready for his next success with Elysium. The album consists of 14 original tracks with Di Meola accompanied by guests such a Philippe Saisse and Mario Parmisano on keyboards, Rhani Krija on percussion, …

The Essentials for Any Musician

I’ve recently had a few of my students’ parents ask me about the music equipment that their child should have and so I decided to answer it here. I think it’s also apt at this point to mention the importance of storing musical instruments and accessories correctly and safely to avoid any damage. Parents, take …