Orbert Davis conducting the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic

Chicago Jazz Philharmonic

What technology can do for the CJP classroom.

Seven ideas, five minutes. Every one of them is priced and buildable today.

01The week

One visit a week becomes seven.

MonTueWedThuFriSatSun

Today. One Saturday with a teaching artist.

MonTueWedThuFriSatSun

With a practice mentor. Seven days.

A Jazz Academy student sees a teaching artist on Saturday, then practices alone for six days.

The mentor is there the other six.

02The mentor

A mentor in every student’s pocket.

Pitch and rhythm assessment is already licensable, at about $14 a student a year (MakeMusic Cloud).

The improvisation layer and the mentor itself are the build.

Text first. Voice only if CJP wants it.

Marcus

Trumpet, grade 8

HOLD

BARS 5 TO 8

Pitch on the F# is 20 cents flat. Rhythm locked. Try it at 80 bpm.

How do I start improvising over these changes?

ASK ORBERT

Listen to the bridge three times before you play a note, until you can sing it. Then play the one phrase you already hear in your head, and let the rest come from there.

03The archive

Five hundred shows become a teacher you can search.

how do you approach the bridge on Body and Soul
The Real Deal, on the bridge and the balladMarch 14, 2019 1:42:07
Jazz Academy masterclass, ballad phrasingFebruary 8, 2020 0:23:51

Example

The Real Deal archive, residency masterclasses, and Saturday rehearsals, transcribed and indexed.

About $540 to transcribe 500 three-hour shows, at $0.006 a minute.

Condition: if the WDCB archive can be used.

04The catalog

CJP University: one course becomes twenty.

A masterclass recorded once on Saturday becomes a course in days, with AI-assisted editing.

The catalog is waiting on production time, not material.

Jazz Academy, Saturday cohort, 24 students

19 Practiced this week
3 Stuck Marcus, upper register. Dee, swing eighths. Ana, reading in four flats.
2 Ready to move up Ana, Julian

Parent digest, ready to send

Marcus practiced 4 days, 52 minutes. Working on: F# in the upper register.

Approve and send CJP staff approve every digest before it goes out.

05The Saturday

The teaching artist’s Saturday, before class starts.

The artist walks in already knowing who practiced, who is stuck, and who is ready to move up.

Parents get a weekly note that CJP approves first.

06The evidence

Districts buy what they can measure.

JazzALIVE is already inside Chicago Public Schools, and Propel has run in classrooms since 2001.

Home-practice data is the efficacy evidence districts buy on. The Jazz Academy survey numbers are the starting line.

07Sequence

The path.

This school year

  • Records and consent in the registration flow.
  • One address for the online school.
  • A phone on a tripod every Saturday.
  • No build.

Next year

  • The mentor in the Saturday cohort’s hands.
  • Licensed assessment plus the improvisation layer.
  • A year of numbers.

After

  • The catalog.
  • The districts.
  • Hybrid Third Stream residencies.

Decisions that stay with CJP: kids’ data and consent, archive rights, whether any voice is ever used, and production capacity.

Every CJP student with a mentor six days a week. Twenty-five years of teaching that keeps teaching.

Put together by Greg Spero, September 2026.

Happy to talk it through. Text or email.