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.

![]() 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. |
![]() 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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