Based in the Bay Area since 1988, Ms. Migt has established of the preeminent private schools creating the foundation for some of Marin County's best musical talent. Miraflores Music Academy has produced the likes of Jeff Derby, Jaimeo Brown, Alex Baky, J.J.Byars, Robby Marshall, Isabella Quereshi, Zach Gunsell, Bram Kincheloe, Elecia Strauss, Seth Paris, Kristina Hoffman, Jarrett Cherner and Salvador Santana.
Students have been selected for prestigious musical performance groups on the state and national levels like the International Monterey High School All-star Jazz Band, the San Francisco High School Jazz Allstars and have received a variety of scholarships to institutions such as Oberlin College, Sarah Lawrence, Berklee School of Music, the New School to Cal Arts, Manhattan School of Music, NYU, USC and UCLA.
The array of award-winning Miraflores students have performed in the Duke Ellington Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, the International Association of Jazz Educators' Convention, San Jose Jazz Festival, San Francisco Jazz Festival, et al, or with 'players' from Bill Watrus to Greg Tardy to the Mingus Big Band.
A 'maestra' of many elements, multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer and educator, Marcia Migt's most recent performances include those with the Iowa Blues Hall of Fame Allstars, Globestar Recordings' Alex Puentes of the Alex Cuba Band, the 2005 San Jose Jazz Festival with Wayne Wallace's Rhythm and Rhyme, Sonoma Jazz Festival's 'Unplugged' Series.
Last year she played the 2005 International Association of Jazz Educators' with the African American Jazz Caucus Allstar Big Band (and was the 2004 Featured Artist performing with the Historically Black Colleges' University Allstar Band), the 2004 Monterey, Stern Grove and Fillmore Jazz Festivals as the only female saxophonist with Anthony Brown and the Asian American Orchestra; and with Wayne Wallace and Pete Escovedo at 2004's Vallejo's Jazz Festival.
With musical skills that cross multiple genres, this year alone Marcia recorded with Dr. Anthony Brown and the Asian American Orchestra on his latest release Rhapsodies, a re-arrangement of George Gershwin's Rhapsody; performed with the Northern California Lighthouse Singers at their 25th Anniversary conducted by Helen Stevens and Stephen Roberts.
Her latest project as producer, Passing the Baton: the Miget-Redd Session, Part 1 'streams' and is available on www.mee-j.com.
A 'performing' artist, Carl Lewis' imagery is housed in the collections of such institutions as the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (his alma mater), Southern Methodist University, Texas Instruments, the Brooklyn Museum, the Schomburg Collection for Research into Black Culture of the New York City Public Library, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Amon Carter Museum. Selected in 1993 he was one of ten artists included in a Curriculum Guide for the Smithsonian Institution's African American Museum Project. Co-author of Lumiere Capture (Captured Light), an overview of the history of laser imagery as art, his energies are currently involved in imajinnWEST, utilizing and designing products evolving from the sculptural light illusions he photographed. A Fellow of the International Biographical Center (Cambridge) and referenced in a number of publications, e.g. African American Lives by Henry Louis Gates and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Who's Who in the South and Southwest (24th through Millennium Editions), Black Photographers 1940-1988; a Bio-Bibliography, An Illustrated Survey of Contemporaries, and Deborah Wills' Reflections in Black; Black Photographers 1940 to the Present.
The JazzIcons facet of Carl's work combines photographs of Elder musicians with jissereau laser imagery manipulated via computer, the resultant print is then finished with an Old World surface treatment like goldleaf or eggshell. For the IAJE donation Marcia and Carl selected Dr. Donald Byrd because of his innovation and his Blackbyrds impact on the urban youth of the 1960s.
,"For us the connection between the visual and aural worlds seemed a perfect match," Lewis and Migt say. “With the school's population as young as they are we're always searching for modalities to keep their attention. Animation and our prospective distance learning programs are next. Wait 'til you see it."
With more than 8,000 members in 40 countries, IAJE is the leading authority and primary voice for the promotion of jazz. Through the Global Outreach Fund they provide financial resources for education and outreach including the IAJE Artist Outreach Network, the Gil Evans and ASCAP/IAJE Commission Programs, the Sisters in Jazz Collegiate All-Stars, the Clifford Brown - Stan Getz Fellowship Program, IAJE Teacher Training Institutes, distributing more than $1 million to deserving students, educators, and institutions since 1968.
For more information contact All About Jazz.
