The Jazz String Caucus, founded in January, 2000 at the International Association for Jazz Education Conference in New Orleans, believes that improvisational fluency should be available to every string player: a skill that we feel is essential in nurturing the complete musical development of the twenty-first century string player.

To that end, we strive to help string teachers at every level teach improvisation, and we're trying to make it easier for jazz teachers to teach strings. We're creating curriculum recommendations for string teachers who want to learn about jazz, and technical recommendations for the jazz teachers who don't know strings.

We have string improvisation resources available for all, including bibliographies and discographies, sheet music for alternative string groups, and contacts with improvising string clinicians and teachers. We're connecting people with questions to people with answers.

We have a website at www.stringscentral.com , which will list and help distribute instructional sheet music for all sizes of string chamber groups, including rhythm sections. We also list clinicians there, and their instructional products such as books and videos.

The discussion list is a forum where your questions, and possibly your knowledge, can be shared.

Please Join the String Caucus!

On this page is a history of the first year of the String Caucus, traced through emails during the year 2000.

The Jazz String Caucus would like to congratulate Jeff Thorneycroft who won the competition to design the Jazz String Caucus logo. Please visit his website at www.retroluxe.com .

logo by Jeff Thorneycroft