Young musicians from all corners of the U.S. are meeting in Traverse City this week, filling Northwestern Michigan College’s Fine Arts Building with the sounds of jazz, reggae, funk, R&B and Latin music.
They are taking part in the Archipelago Project’s Musical Innovation and Leadership Academy.
Over eight days, musicians ages 11-18 participate in guest artist collaborations and student-led ensemble rehearsals.
Forget quiet practice rooms. During daily rehearsals, members of the Archipelago Project's summer academy program often call out solos, swap ideas and build each other up in ensemble.
With faculty support and mentorship, students rehearse and prepare their own musical sets for community performances.
One such performance takes place Wednesday, July 16 at 5:30 p.m. during IPR's Classical Happy Hour at The Little Fleet in Traverse City.
Classical IPR visited the Archipelago Project academy's brass band rehearsal and recorded a preview of some of the music that will be featured Wednesday during the Classical Happy Hour show.
One of the songs recorded during the rehearsal was "Liza Jane," which the students had arranged and prepared themselves only a couple of hours earlier.
"I taught them the song at ten o'clock this morning," artistic director Garrett Mendez said, "and I told them, come up with your own arrangement of it, and I'll be back in twenty minutes to hear it."
When Daniel Trahey and Garrett Mendez founded the Archipelago Project, they envisioned an environment where students would take ownership and be leaders.
Trahey and Mendez sought a way to help their students reconcile traditional classical training with values of advocacy, social justice and equity.
“Instead of just training performers, we want to teach people to be pedagogues, interpreters, creators and advocates," said Trahey in a 2022 interview with IPR. "And that’s a lot to ask of a musician, but we’ve seen that when we ask for it, people do it."
Both founders view The Archipelago Project as a way to offer students a more comprehensive, inclusive music education that speaks to the issues they face in the present day.
Student musicians from the Archipelago Project's Musical Innovation and Leadership Academy will perform Wednesday, July 16 at 5:30 p.m. at the Little Fleet in Traverse City, part of IPR's Classical Happy Hour series.
Additional performances in the region this week featuring the Archipelago Project student musicians are available here.
Jack Conners engineered the rehearsal recordings featured in this story.
Thanks to Garrett Mendez, Dan Trahey and Armand Hall for additional support.
