American Roots

“Now, you’ve written the song, so it’s not the first time you’ve heard the lyrics,” says vocalist-songwriter Sachal Vasandani. “But now that you’re hearing the lyrics and music together, maybe you can relate to the song in a way you couldn’t before.”

It’s not often that a performer’s sole audience members are the composers themselves. But on April 29, the eyes of hundreds of middle school students will be on Vasandani in Carnegie’s Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage, as they hear him singing the piece they created together for the grand finale of this season’s Perelman American Roots program.

As part of “Big Sound, Big Apple: Jazz in New York City” (the title of this year’s program), seventh-grade students approached jazz in novel, imaginative ways. They designed cover art for dreamed-up albums, finding images that would complement the music, and in doing so learned about ways that music and the visual arts relate to each other. Students also brought to life the stories of major figures of the Harlem Renaissance by constructing imaginary conversations with Langston Hughes, Billie Holiday, and others.

In fact, one particularly rewarding project involved listening to Billie Holiday’s rendition of “They Can’t Take That Away from Me” and comparing it with a more recent version by Sarah Vaughan. Each class then personalized the words of that jazz standard so that the lyrics reflected the students’ own concerns, ranging from school to friends to family. For the final concert at Carnegie Hall, those new takes on the song morph into one final masterpiece, performed by Vasandani and his quartet.

“There’s going to be a real interaction, and the students are going to see things they’ve worked on come to life,” says the Chicago native Vasandani of the culminating concert. “When their words come to life, the students will truly appreciate the way music can lift words up.”

Jazz has always been a transcendent medium for Vasandani, who grew up in a household infused with every kind of music, from Western to Indian classical to pop. Vasandani was fortunate to have a strong jazz program in his high school that fueled his natural attraction to the genre. And he hopes he can instill this same spark in the young students of the American Roots program in this final performance.

With the Perelman American Roots program, in which middle school teachers and professional Teaching Artists participate, Carnegie Hall stretches an educational hand into ten classrooms throughout the metropolitan area each year—from the Bronx to Jersey City—with the mission of enriching students’ understanding of American history, culture, and society. What better path to those goals than through jazz? “My ambition,” Vasandani says, “is that they’ll have something to guide them on their own journey, wherever it takes them.”

This program is made possible by the Ronald O. Perelman Music Endowment Fund.

Perelman American Roots is part of the Isaac Stern Education Legacy, a program supported by the US Department of Education, and by an endowment grant from the Citi Foundation.

Programs of The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall are generously supported by the City of New York: Office of the Mayor, the Department of Cultural Affairs, and the New York City Council; and by the New York State Council on the Arts.