Founded in 1972, Stanford Jazz Workshop (SJW) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to jazz education and appreciation. For nearly four decades, SJW has been bringing the best jazz performers and educators together with students of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds, in two summer programs: the Stanford Jazz Festival and the Stanford Jazz Camp and Jazz Residency.
During the Festival and Jazz Camp/Residency, Stanford Jazz Workshop becomes a lively and supportive community of jazz artists, educators, students, and enthusiasts on the beautiful campus of Stanford University. During the evenings, the Festival presents the top jazz artists in the world and during the day, these same artists mingle with the students at Jazz Camp and Residency to pass on their experience, techniques, and artistic vision. SJW’s programs provide an exceptional immersion in jazz, fostering a deeper appreciation of this great improvisational music genre, hailed by many as “the definitive American art form.”
SJW’s faculty has included jazz greats such as Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, McCoy Tyner, Ray Brown, Jimmy Cobb, Slide Hampton, Mulgrew Miller, Branford Marsalis, Ray Drummond, Mundell Lowe, Dena DeRose, Steve Davis, Jim Rotondi, the Heath Brothers, Sheila Jordan, Geri Allen, Jim Cullum, Phil Woods, and many others. Many emerging jazz stars are past participants of SJW programs, including Joshua Redman, Larry Grenadier, Bill Stewart, Sasha Dobson, Taylor Eigsti, and Jenny Scheinman.
“The Stanford Jazz Workshop’s summer festival traditionally ranks among the best—from the cross-cultural incisiveness of Jon Jang to the Dixieland of cornetist Jim Cullum, there’s not a sour note in the bunch.”
– San Francisco Magazine
