PBS has featured Foshay Learning Center’s music educator, Vincent Womack, and high school senior, Donovan Brown, in “Jazz Ticket”, a new POV documentary series that coincides with the American Promise broadcasts.
Womack, who is a Grammy-nominated musician and longtime USC Good Neighbors Campaign recipient, is featured in this short documentary for building a high school jazz powerhouse through his music programs and inspiring many young musicians, like Brown, go on to college.
“If I could put my heart in like he (Womack) does— like he teaches us, I’d be pretty satisfied” says Brown about his February 22 audition for the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA.
“I believe Donovan has a shot,” says Womack.
Womack has conducted jazz ensembles and orchestras at Foshay Learning Center, one of USC’s Family of Schools, for almost twenty years.
He has been the recipient of USC’s Good Neighbor Campaign, an employee-driven campaign that raises $1.7 million each year to fund partnerships with neighborhood programs.
This year, Womack received support from GNC to support JazzReach, a stimulating jazz enrichment program that matches music mentors from USC’s Thornton School of Music with local high school students—many of whom are Neighborhood Academic Initiative scholars– on choirs, instrumental ensemble, sectionals, and private lessons.
JazzReach programming is provided to approximately 1700 students and families from USC neighborhood schools with over 60 USC Thornton students serving as teachers.
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