About the Pasadena Jazz Institute
The Pasadena Jazz Institute is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, comprised of music educators, musicians, and jazz music lovers, dedicated to promoting jazz education, preservation and participation. The Institute was founded in 2000 by Paul M. Lines who serves as the Institute's executive director.

Currently, the Institute has three main divisions:

The Educational Division promotes jazz education in the Pasadena Schools by providing musically-themed workshops, such as Celebration of the Blues. Children are taught songs rich with the history of blues and are given a chance to perform live during the workshop. The power of music, as a teaching tool, is tremendous.
In addition we offer "Jazz Camp for Kids" every Summer. This last Summer we had 5 week-long sessions with over 80 participants.

The Institute also offers Jazz Concerts, which began in the year 2001 with the Jazz at the Balcony Theatre Concert Series and continued with the December Swings Series. These concerts, in tribute to the Masters of Jazz, are performed in a venue befitting jazz music by the Pasadena area's finest jazz musicians, who are creating their own jazz legacy. For the past three years we have been giving concerts on the terrace of the Pasadena Museum of California Arts. This past summer our concert series ran for 7 weekends with 3 concerts per week.

We provide booking of jazz groups for any occasion, whether it be a private, public or business function. We will be featuring over 60 local professional musicians in our concert series and we have these and many others from which to choose to make the perfect selection for any event.

The Jazz Institute currently is looking for the proper location to build the first of its kind, modern, jazz/art facility. It will contain a Jazz sculpture garden, outdoor amphitheater, jazz gallery with a pictorial history of jazz, performance space, listening room/library and video screening room. We will conduct ensemble classes and private lessons in improvisation. The Institute will also be the home of the newly-formed Pasadena Jazz Orchestra.
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