Come learn how to use the Circle of Descending Fifths to frontload skills for improvisation. Empower every musician in your large jazz ensemble with foundational concepts to apply towards improvising, through daily pattern execution and teaching your rhythm section how to function both individually and as a unit. Information can be applied from bare-bones beginner junior high level to advanced high school level musicians and is an entirely modular approach.
BRING YOUR INSTRUMENT to experience this firsthand as we will play during the session and go from our most foundational element to more advanced theoretical elements like ii-V-I’s, together.
Target Audience
Jazz Directors
Additional Notes
Clinician Info
Barbara Shinaver
Barb Shinaver is a trombonist native to the Fresno area, and an active educator-artist throughout California’s Central Valley. She is the new Coordinator of Jazz Studies at California State University, Stanislaus in Turlock; and is in her 6th year serving as Director of the San Joaquin Valley Jazz Festival. Barb also teaches trombone privately in the Fresno area, and various applied lessons at Fresno City College.
For five years prior, she was the Director of Jazz Bands at the Buchanan Educational Center in Clovis, and two years previously was the Assistant Band Director at Bullard High School in Fresno. Throughout her time in each district she also taught elementary band, serving students from 5th through 12th grade, concurrently.
Barb holds a B.A. in Music Education from Fresno State and an M.M. in Trombone Performance from the University of Montana in Missoula, Montana. She is passionate about service to the profession and the state, and coordinates logistics for the California All-State Music Educator’s Conference. She is excited to continue pursuing her career in both classical and jazz performance while maintaining an active teaching schedule.