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J, age 14, performs as part of the prestigious University of Southern California (USC) Thornton School of Music Los Angeles Youth Jazz Ensemble ( LAYJE) after topping the nationwide U.S. audition search (top 3): Concert in two hours Los Angeles time: 7pm Sunday December 9, Newman Recital Hall.
Background:Last September, applicants nationwide were given a new 10-minute required audition piece to perform with improvs, followed by sight reading of notes, scales of blues and interview. Myra received the audition piece for him only one week before the day of audition.
Upon hearing him perform on alto sax after hearing hundreds of others, the music director pointed at him and said, “dude, you’re the man!”
♥ ♥ ♥
” … Founded in 1884, and today the oldest continually operating cultural institution in Los Angeles, the Thornton School consistently ranks among the top one percent of the nation’s music schools and conservatories. Graduates of the school attain positions with major orchestras, ensembles, recording studios and music industry firms and perform on stages and in studios around the world.
“Blending the rigors of a traditional conservatory-style education with the benefits of studying at a leading research university, the Thornton School offers students a thorough music education in a real-world context. Located at the center of Los Angeles, the school is the collegiate partner of choice for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the GRAMMY Foundation and The Recording Academy, to name a few.
“In addition to their work with these ensembles, Thornton students are a constant presence in local classrooms, reaching out to the next generation of musicians through music education and appreciation courses. With its faculty, students, events and work, the Thornton School is one of the most important cultural resources in Los Angeles.”
(quoted paragraphs and image from the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music website, with graphics on J’s performance embedded by blog admin)
for the 43 members of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 100, working at the Windows on the World restaurant, who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Center
Alabanza. Praise the cook with a shaven head
and a tattoo on his shoulder that said Oye,
a blue-eyed Puerto Rican with people from Fajardo,
the harbor of pirates centuries ago.
Praise the lighthouse in Fajardo, candle
glimmering white to worship the dark saint of the sea.
Alabanza. Praise the cook’s yellow Pirates cap
worn in the name of Roberto Clemente, his plane
that flamed into the ocean loaded with cans for Nicaragua,
for all the mouths chewing the ash of earthquakes.
Alabanza. Praise the kitchen radio, dial clicked
even before the dial on the oven, so that music and Spanish
rose before bread. Praise the bread. Alabanza.
Praise Manhattan from a hundred and seven flights up,
like Atlantis glimpsed through the windows of an ancient aquarium.
Praise the great windows where immigrants from the kitchen
could squint and almost see their world, hear the chant of nations:
Ecuador, México, Republica Dominicana,
Haiti, Yemen, Ghana, Bangladesh.
Alabanza. Praise the kitchen in the morning,
where the gas burned blue on every stove
and exhaust fans fired their diminutive propellers,
hands cracked eggs with quick thumbs
or sliced open cartons to build an altar of cans.
Alabanza. Praise the busboy’s music, the chime-chime
of his dishes and silverware in the tub.
Alabanza. Praise the dish-dog, the dishwasher
who worked that morning because another dishwasher
could not stop coughing, or because he needed overtime
to pile the sacks of rice and beans for a family
floating away on some Caribbean island plagued by frogs.
Alabanza. Praise the waitress who heard the radio in the kitchen
and sang to herself about a man gone. Alabanza.
After the thunder wilder than thunder,
after the shudder deep in the glass of the great windows,
after the radio stopped singing like a tree full of terrified frogs,
after night burst the dam of day and flooded the kitchen,
for a time the stoves glowed in darkness like the lighthouse in Fajardo,
like a cook’s soul. Soul I say, even if the dead cannot tell us
about the bristles of God’s beard because God has no face,
soul I say, to name the smoke-beings flung in constellations
across the night sky of this city and cities to come.
Alabanza I say, even if God has no face.
Alabanza. When the war began, from Manhattan and Kabul
two constellations of smoke rose and drifted to each other,
mingling in icy air, and one said with an Afghan tongue:
Teach me to dance. We have no music here.
And the other said with a Spanish tongue:
I will teach you. Music is all we have.
(poem by Martín Espada, copy-pasted from poetryfoundation.org used here non-commercially for academic purposes and in memoriam of the 2,997 fatalities of 9/11; photo by Ezra Stoller rightclicked from nymag.com “The Windows on the World dining room, on the 107th floor of the North Tower” of the World Trade Center, used here non-commercially for academic purposes, in memoriam, song by Beyoncé used here non-commercially for academic purposes, in memoriam)
applicants nationwide were given a new 10-minute required audition piece to perform with improvs, followed by sight reading of notes, scales of blues and interview. Myra received the audition piece for him only one week before the day of audition. 
