Indianapolis Jazz Hero
Every school day, Noblesville High School music educator, bassist and Yamaha performing artist Bethany Robinson, 2022 JJA Jazz Hero, sings and dances with her students: “Alright … Okay … You win … Baby, what can I do?”
The first 20 minutes of her class in this town adjacent to Indianapolis pass swiftly, she says, often without her doing any speaking. “My warmup process came from stealing lots of different ideas from great band directors. When students are coming in, I always have music playing, something on the stereo so they can be hearing records. Count Basie or Ellington or Tower of Power. Let’s just set the mood for class today. Kids come in, feel the energy and then get set, ready to learn.
“I usually pick a song as our theme for the year,” Robinson continues. “Currently it’s ‘Alright, Ok, You Win,’ by Count Basie and Joe Williams. Hearing that, the whole band is up dancing. Then we go into our blues scale, our long tones, tons of more scales and improv.“
This energetic approach to jazz — and life — has paid off, as the Noblesville High School Jazz 1 band Bethany has directed will compete for top honors at the 27th annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival, May 5 through 7 at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Hoosiers are passionate about their high school bands, and Noblesville’s ascension to high ranking makes them proud. So does the fact that Robinson is now one of 10 finalists selected from 1,100 nominees for the 2022 Grammy Music Educator Award. Recommendations from her students explain why.
“She is easily the most hard-working, intelligent and inclusive teacher I have ever had,” wrote then-senior Taylor Cash. “She (Robinson) is a true lover of jazz, and if there was ever any question, the five jazz bands she runs on her own can speak for themselves.”
But to speak for her: Robinson grew up in Kokomo, Indiana; she graduated with degrees in music education and string bass from Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Illinois. Over the past decade her career has blossomed. In 2011 she received a Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Grant underwriting her participation in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Band Director Academy, and travel, blogging and musical composition inspired by current trends of jazz in America.
In 2014-15 Robinson was named Indiana Jazz Educator of the Year by the Indianapolis Jazz Foundation, and in 2015 Noblesville Teacher of the Year. She’s currently Past-President of the Indiana Jazz Educators Association, where in 2015 she created the now-annual, state-wide All-District Jazz Band. This work has taken her far — in 2017, she was a guest adjudicator for the Western Australian Schools’ Jazz Festival, the biggest student jazz festival in Western Australia.
Back home in Indiana, in 2018 Bethany joined forces with Monika Herzig of Indiana University (herself a JJA Jazz Hero) to start a chapter of “Jazz Girls Day,” organizing concerts, master classes, and workshops around the state.
Says Herzig, “Bethany has performed with my Sheroes group for several tours and collaborated on presenting five years of Jazz Girls Days. She is an exceptional educator and musician, well-documented by the success of her students and their appreciation and respect. It is rare to have such a complete package of knowledge, enthusiasm, leadership, and charisma – her students and our community are grateful for her tireless and selfless sharing of her gifts.“
Robinson, for her part, says the Jazz Girls Day mentorship model for female artists bears fruit. “Girls that are shy coming into my bands have come out of their shell on the bandstands. I say, ‘We have to find ways to make it comfortable. Take just two notes, and practice improvising.’ You can teach confidence as you teach music.”
In 2019 Robinson was awarded a second Lilly Creativity Grant, for travel to Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to study her family history and samba, chorro and bossa nova genres. Outside the classroom, she gigs around Indianapolis on upright and electric bass; her roles at NHS now include assistant band director, assistant orchestra director and director of the band program. The past couple years have, of course, been trying.
“In 2020 when we shut down, it was supposed to be a teacher workday – but then we learned we had one day to figure out how to teach virtually,” she says. “We switched to hanging out and sharing music virtually. In 2021, we had a hybrid teaching model, which was a unique challenge. Teach half the alphabet at the beginning of the week, the rest of the alphabet Thursday and Friday,” she recalls, still dismayed. “Some bands didn’t have a drummer all year round, some didn’t have a lead sax or trumpet player.
“But my first concern was to do whatever I could do to salvage the year for the students. The whole situation was a real challenge to their mental health.” Some of her student musicians met outside of school in open garages — even in 30 degree weather — to have a socially distanced jam, she recalls.
A further challenge has recently arisen: serious news about her health. “I was diagnosed with cancer five weeks ago,” Bethany said in a conversation in early March, “so was doing scans, biopsies and meeting with surgeons. I had a sit-down with the whole band to tell them what was going on, which was really intense.” With her doctor’s approval, Robinson’s treatment plan was adjusted around the band’s year end schedule. She says she feels confident about the treatment’s outcome and takes this, too, as a lesson.
“I think the music is secondary to what we learn as we hit obstacles along the way. I want to be someone who’s always encouraging these young people to be successful at whatever they do,” says Bethany Robinson. Alright! Ok! You Win! You Jazz Hero, you! — Leslie L. Fuller
