Over the past seven years, Constructing Modern Knowledge has become known as the place where educators embrace new possibilities and achieve beyond their wildest expectations. CMK is also where educators get to meet their educational heroes (Deborah Meier, Jonathan Kozol, Alfie Kohn, Lella Gandini, Lilian Katz, Bob Tinker, Edith Ackermann) spend time with living legends and experience up-close what expertise looks, feels, and sounds like. (Casey Neistat, Cam Perron, Pete Nelsom, Derrick Pitts, James Loewen, Todd Machover, Marvin Minsky, Mitchel Resnick, Leah Buechley, Emmet Cohen).
This year’s participants at CMK 2015, (July 7-10) are sure in for the sort of learning experience unavailable at any other event. Two of the world’s finest musicians, Dr. Barry Harris and Jimmy Heath bring their collective 174 years of musical experience to Constructing Modern Knowledge for a once-in-a-lifetime masterclass. Register today!
Both gentlemen have earned the title of Jazz Master from the National Endowment from the Arts and Barry Harris has a Lifetime Grammy Award in addition to countless other honors. In addition to their numerous musical accomplishments, both are veteran educators in university and informal settings. In classrooms and on the bandstand, they have mentored generations of musicians. Mr. Heath joined us in 2013.
 Barry Harris is an Internationally renowned jazz pianist, composer and teacher. Dr. Harris is the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from Northwestern University. He is the recipient of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Dr. Harris has also received the Living Jazz Legacy award from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Association, is a member of the American Jazz Hall of Fame, and was awarded an American Jazz Masters Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.In addition, Dr. Harris received the Manhattan Borough President Award for Excellence. This award was given for recognition of his devoted public service and in honor of excellence in the field of music. He received the 1999 Mentoraward for his work with youngsters at the Manhattan Country School in NYC.
Dr. Harris has devoted his life to the advancement of Jazz and in the 1980’s founded the Jazz Cultural Theatre. For the past several decades Dr. Harris has been an exponent of the classic Jazz style that was developed by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk and Coleman Hawkins. Harris has played with Cannonball Adderley, Sonny Stitt, Illinois Jacquet, Coleman Hawkins, Dexter Gordon, Lee Morgan, Charles McPherson and Max Roach. He recorded 19 albums as a leader and lived with Thelonious Monk for much of the last decade of Monk’s life. Dr. Barry Harris receives frequent request to appear as a guest lecturer by universities and various musical venues all over the world. His masterclasses and interactive instrument and vocal workshops focus on the complete aspects of music including improvisation, harmonic movement and theory. His schedule includes lectures in the United States, Holland, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Japan. When he is not travelling, Dr. Harris holds weekly music workshop sessions in New York City for vocalists, students of piano, and other instruments. |
 Jimmy Heath has long been recognized as a brilliant instrumentalist and a magnificent composer and arranger. Jimmy is the middle brother of the legendary Heath Brothers (Percy Heath/bass and Tootie Heath/drums), and is the father of Mtume. He has performed with nearly all the jazz greats of the last 50 years, from Howard McGhee, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis to Wynton Marsalis. In 1948 at the age of 21, he performed in the First International Jazz Festival in Paris with McGhee, sharing the stage with Coleman Hawkins, Slam Stewart, and Erroll Garner. One of Heath’s earliest big bands (1947-1948) in Philadelphia included John Coltrane, Benny Golson, Specs Wright, Cal Massey, Johnny Coles, Ray Bryant, and Nelson Boyd. Charlie Parker and Max Roach sat in on one occasion.During his career, Jimmy Heath has performed on more than 100 record albums including seven with The Heath Brothers and twelve as a leader. Jimmy has also written more than 125 compositions, many of which have become jazz standards and have been recorded by other artists including Art Farmer, Cannonball Adderley, Clark Terry, Chet Baker, Miles Davis, James Moody, Milt Jackson, Ahmad Jamal, Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie J.J Johnson and Dexter Gordon. Jimmy has also composed extended works – seven suites and two string quartets – and he premiered his first symphonic work, “Three Ears,” in 1988 at Queens College (CUNY) with Maurice Peress conducting. His autobiography. I Walked with Giants – The Autobiography of Jimmy Heath, was published in 2010 by Temple University Press.
After eleven years as Professor of Music at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, Heath maintains an extensive performance schedule and continues to conduct workshops and clinics throughout the United States, Europe, and Canada. He has also taught jazz studies at Jazzmobile, Housatonic College, City College of New York, and The New School for Social Research.
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