Alumni return for YoungArts Miami to mentor and teach future artists

80 of this year’s YoungArts winners have descended on Miami to take part in YoungArts Miami, one of a series of regional programs modeled after the organization’s signature program, National YoungArts Week.

During the week, those winners receive a life-changing opportunity to learn, connect and collaborate with their peers during master classes — many led by returning alumni. Two of those returning to teach are Jacomo Bairos (1994 YoungArts Winner in Classical Music) and Emmet Cohen (2009 YoungArts Winner in Jazz).

Bairos who is co-founder and artistic director of NuDeco Ensemble will be this year’s Classical Music Director and Cohen, a multi-faceted jazz pianist and composer will be the Jazz Music Director. Both will lead master classes and workshops during the week which will culminate in student performances.

Bairos and Cohen are both excited to be back on the YoungArts Campus, a place where they began to realize their dreams of having a career in the arts.

“This is the first time I’m doing something of this magnitude with YoungArts,” said Bairos a Miami-Dade County high school graduate. “I’ve come back and done talks, but this is the first major initiative I’ve had the opportunity to lead.”

While Cohen says, “it’s always an amazing opportunity to be involved with YoungArts and interact directly with the next wave of artists who without a doubt will make a difference on our world.”

Both will be working with eight kids each who come to Miami from Texas, Georgia and other parts of Florida. Bairos has gotten to know the students leading up to YoungArts Miami and sees a lot of himself in them.

“They’re all incredibly smart, witty, talented and focused. These were the kids I was hanging out with at this age,” says Bairos. “I feel very akin to them. When I was at Interlochen it was a very motivating environment and it reminds me of the drive and focus that I had at that age.”

Emmet Cohen

Cohen’s strategy for the week is to “strive to help them get to know themselves and look deep inside their abilities to find their own path towards developing their individual artistries,” he says.

Giving them more than just workshops on music, Bairos plans to teach the students that there’s more than one career trajectory for them. He wants to give them other options outside the world they’ve been studying and hopefully lead them down a new path.

“My journey, and what I hope to expose them to is what is relevant now in classical music so they can evolve with the current times,” says Bairos. “I want to show them how when I grew older and matured, I knew that looking at my life in the long term I wanted to be a dynamic and multitalented person.”

Which is why his classes and workshops will be filled with creativity, improv and sharing of alternative music, much like NuDeco Ensemble does. They students are going to re-imagine some of NuDeco’s pieces “and develop them into a broader, more collaborative piece of music to create what they’ll perform at the finale concert.”

He’ll even provide them tips and tools on entrepreneurship and talk about the business angle of a musical career. “I want to give them a dynamic week of inclusion,” says Bairos.

Jacomo Bairos

Special guests are a major part of the week for Cohen who says, “I plan a fun, exciting, and hardworking week. Three guest artists will join our group throughout the week— one from each generation: jazz legend Billy Hart, Dean of the Frost School of Music and brilliant jazz pianist Shelly Berg, and young lion of the drums Kyle Poole.”

Cohen hopes to pass on how he felt during his week at YoungArts as a winner. “National YoungArts Week was one of the greatest weeks of my life. It was there, that I felt the affirmation that music is something I will be able to do for the rest of my life. I was surrounded by likeminded, inspiring people for the first time in my life,” he says.

As a professional with NuDeco, Bairos has worked very closely with YoungArts since their first days. “NuDeco’s first offices were in the YoungArts building and we continue to work very closely with them, we have many more big projects planned with them.”

Cohen’s week will culminate in a performance on Feb. 29 at Miami Theater Center, a multidisciplinary show that will include YoungArts winners in Dance, Jazz, Theater and Voice. “I will provide the jazz direction along with directors Darren Biggart, Torya Beard and Ayodele Casel,” says Cohen.

The Classical Music winners will perform on Feb. 28 at Lightbox at Goldman Warehouse in Wynwood. That performance will also feature Writer’s Readings.

To see the full list of performances culminating from YoungArts Miami visit http://youngarts.org/

Pictured above: YoungArts Miami 2019 Jazz Performance, photo by Jason Koerner

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