More than 30 years of bringing music to downtown Peoria continued this week with the 2023 Gerald M. Brookhart Arts in Education Spring Celebration. Friday’s performances also doubled as a recognition of this weekend's International Jazz Day.
Music from Whittier Primary School and the Illinois Central College Vocal Jazz Ensemble filled the plaza outside the Peoria County Courthouse. Vendors lined the street and a crowd of a few dozen, as well as those passing by pulled in by the sounds, stopped to take a moment and take in some art.
“A jazz combo is like a perfect democracy. Everybody has a voice and they play together and they understand one another,” said Mary Jo Papich, a former Peoria music educator and member of the Jazz Education Network. “And they know by bringing too much attention to themselves, they’re not helping the group. They help one another, politely play and listen and support one another. That’s what we should be doing in life.”
International Jazz Day is Sunday, April 30. The global event was founded by UNESCO and the Herbie Hancock Foundation. This year’s event includes global concerts from more than 190 countries, including Zimbabwe, France, Brazil and South Africa. Peoria’s concert will be broadcast from WTVP at 9 p.m. Sunday. There’s also a jazz ensemble performance at Bradley University’s Dingledine Music Center at 7:30 p.m. Saturday.
Papich thinks the improvisational nature of jazz helps it bridge cultural divides.
“That helps, the collaboration and the spirit of wholesomeness and unity and wanting one another to play their best,” she said. “So they can do their best performance. And hopefully, when they walk off the bandstand, that feeling continues and carries over into everyday life.”
The Illinois Central College vocal jazz ensemble put their all into the performance outside the courthouse. Students improvised scat solos, belted, and broke out falsettos on arrangements of old jazz standards, Ben Folds, Earth, Wind and Fire and more.
“We had one song here today where the combo just played a set of changes and we had students step out and really sing something they’ve never sang exactly the same way before,” said ICC professor and music department chair Julie Clemens. “So every time they come out, it’s a new exploration, it’s a chance to try something different.”
Clemens said there’s a lot to making a jazz performance look and sound energetic, lively and engaged, so the group has a rigorous rehearsal schedule.
“We just go about performing as many jazz songs as possible and showing jazz to the entire community that we possibly can,” said ICC sophomore and ensemble member Madison Covey. “It’s a lot of fun, a lot of energy, confidence. I’m just having a good time.”
Though the focus Friday was on jazz, the weeks of Arts in Education performances feature genres of all kinds. Founder Gerald Brookhart said the program started in 1985 with just cardboard boxes painted by the children in a summer school program he oversaw and the municipal band in the courthouse plaza.
The summer event was the first time the plaza had been used for a concert and was a great success. But Burkhart saw the opportunity to do a series of concerts after school ensembles had time to practice their pieces, moving the event to spring.
“By spring they wanted to go into doing concerts and I said bring them down, bring their people out and bring the people of Peoria down to enjoy the good things that we have here,” said Brookhart. “So that was how it all started, cardboard boxes. And here we are today.”
Brookhart says it’s important the event exposes people to art, but also brings them to Downtown Peoria to see everything the city has to offer.
“I hope more and more people come down,” he said. “I hope we have more and more things like this, to bring them down.”
You can see what the Arts in Education Spring Celebration and what downtown Peoria has to offer as performances continue in the courthouse plaza most weekdays — from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. through May 15.
