In the age of rock and rap music, jazz is “old fogey” stuff that couldn’t possibly appeal to modern children. Right?
Wrong, said Lisa Yves, a Massachusetts-based Jewish singer-pianist-songwriter and educator. In fact, she said she has discovered that children readily respond to classic jazz.
“Kids love patterns,” she said in an interview in the lobby of Milwaukee’s Pfister Hotel on Dec. 20. Jazz songs, she said, are filled with patterns, from the basic song forms to the chord progressions.
Children also enjoy “scat” singing — using nonsense syllables or vocal noises to sing a melody or to improvise over chords. And that inspired the composer in Yves to create a song “Alphabet Scat,” which apparently is one of the hits on her CD “Jazz for Kids: Everybody’s Boppin’”, released in 2000.
“I got a lot of praise for that CD,” Yves said. “It was well-received by educators and parents; and kids and parents loved it.”
Indeed, the customer reviews on Amazon.com gave the disc solid five-star ratings. “It’s what music and kids should be about,” wrote Louis A. D’Antonio of Randolph, Vermont. “My six-year-old and I ride around the Green Mountains listening to ‘Jazz for Kids’ and happily scatting together.”
And a self-identified preschool music teacher, Brenda M. Iacocca of Carmel, Ind., wrote, “I love the mixed meters, tempo changes, and kid-appeal of the songs. I use this CD as a mood setter before my classes, as an instrumental play-along, and for dancing.”
Yves was in Milwaukee in December to work with children at the Milwaukee Montessori School on their holiday concert on Dec. 21. This was her second visit there; she taught scat and bebop during the past March, but at that time didn’t do a program.
Lani Knutson, the school’s music director, wrote in an email to The Chronicle that “music is an integral part of our curriculum, and we strive to expose our students to a wide variety of musical experiences.”
Last school year, “we were looking for a jazz singer … to give [our students] an experience of working with a professional jazz musician,” wrote Knutson. After finding Yves on her website, the school brought her in for two days, and then “we thought it would be fun to have her back for a concert.”
And in a telephone conversation on Jan. 5, Knutson said seeing the way Yves worked with the children was “just like watching magic… She is able to take a really complex art form like jazz and make it accessible to children as young as first grade.” Moreover, “the kids love it; they were so excited that she was coming back this year.”
Yves said the program included 11 songs, holidays’ songs and some of her own music.
Yves, 44, herself discovered jazz when she was in high school. “I understood the form, and I loved improvising and the freedom to improvise,” she said.
But her musical background and interests include more than that. A native of New York City born Lisa Sukienik (Yves, her stage name, plays on her middle name, Eve), Yves started piano lessons at age 7 and was singing by the time she was 10. She also began composing at 10.
“Something clicked,” she said. “Everywhere I would go, I would play and sing, and people would react.”
“Everywhere” included the Jewish day schools she attended — a Solomon Schechter School (Conservative) and the Yeshiva of Flatbush. But even as a child, she said, she was interested in improvising.
“I would improvise on Beethoven” when practicing his music, partly, she admitted, out of laziness, but also because “my ear was so good, I wanted to play what I heard. And I don’t like to copy anything.”
She started at New York University as a theater major, but discovered that acting required her to “dig deep” into her emotions, and “I did not want to do that.” So she switched to music and became the first jazz vocal major at the school.
During college, she had joined a wedding band and had supported herself that way. She continued after college, but found it “a lonely life.” Then she met Jeff Winner, and “it was love at first sight.” He owns his own business, and they have two now teen-aged daughters.
After she had her first child, Yves began giving voice lessons to children. “All along, I didn’t realize I was always a teacher” who would teach songs to people, but she had resisted the thought of studying music education in college, as her goal was performing.
But she discovered she was good at teaching and that children responded positively when she tried teaching them jazz. That resulted in, among other things, three “Jazz for Kids” recordings.
Yves also is involved in Jewish music. She is music director of the play at the Solomon Schechter School her children attend, and she started a “gospel choir” at the synagogue she attends, Temple Beth Abraham.
And Yves has released two CDs — “Do You Remember?” and “The Gypsy in Me” — with her mother, Helen Sukienik. Both her parents were Polish Jews who managed to flee into the Soviet Union during World War II. They thereby survived the war, and settled in Israel for a time before relocating to New York.
Her father died about two years ago, but her mother, who is “almost 80,” is a poet; and she wrote lyrics in several languages (including Hebrew and Yiddish) for her daughter to set to music on both recordings.
Currently, Yves also is a member of an all-Jewish women rock band called HRT (for “hormone replacement therapy”). She also said she likes yoga and hiking, and by and large has a “laid back attitude” that she said she inherited from her father. “I take it as it comes.”
But she also said, “I would like to go all over the country and work with kids, to teach what jazz is” and “keep alive the tradition.”
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