The primary objective of the Choral Music Program at KCKCC is to educate the students and the community about vocal ensemble music through stylistic variety and tonal diversity, based on historical precedent. This objective is achieved by exposing choir members to music of different nationalities and/or cultures and their commitment to recreate a unique tone quality that identifies with the cultural environment of each composition.
 
The KCKCC Vocal Jazz Program takes pride in performing professional-level vocal jazz ensemble literature. The music within today’s program represents a crossover of the jazz and popular music idioms. The students in the Vocal Jazz program learn Jazz Education through a variety of methods. First of all, several of the students take private vocal jazz coachings 
weekly. They also perform music by professional vocal ensembles, arrangements by well-known vocal jazz educators, and learn jazz and popular music standards (both through the ensemble and within the private coachings). Lastly, 2/3 of the vocalists in our program are on full-tuition vocal music scholarship from the college (where they can be any major, but must participate in choir and applied voice). 

Director BIO:
John Stafford II is currently the Director of Choral Music Activities at Kansas City Kansas Community College. He was previously appointed at Millikin Univiersity and Eastern Illinois University teaching music composition, theory and orchestration. He holds degrees from Millikin University, Bowling Green State University, and is completing a doctorate from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Among his professional activities, Professor Stafford serves as the Jazz and Show Choir Chair of the Kansas Choral Directors Association; he is also a member of National Association for Music Educators, Jazz Educators Network, and American Choral Directors Association. Also, Stafford was just appointed in August 2014 as the Director of Music at Community Christian Church in Kansas City, MO.

The Standard, is the award-winning contemporary vocal jazz ensemble from Kansas City Kansas Community College. They have recently been invited performed at the national conferences of the Jazz Education Network, the American Choral Directors Association, and the National Association for Music Education. The Standard has also been selected to perform at the Kansas Music Educators Association In-Service Workshop, the New York Voices Jazz Festival, the Real Group Festival, the New York City Jazz Festival at Jazz at the Lincoln Center and has received a number #1 rating at the University of Northern Colorado/Greeley Jazz Festival. Within the last three years, members of the The Standard have won seven Downbeat Magazine Student Music Awards for Outstanding Performance, Live Engineered Recording, Studio Engineered Recording, and Outstanding Soloist in the Community College category. The group has shared the stage with such highly acclaimed artists as Take 6, The New York Voices, m-pact, Carmen Bradford, Dianne Reeves and Marilyn Maye. In December of 2018, The Standard released their first studio recording, Feelin’ Good, and the album has been played on radio stations in over a half dozen states throughout the Midwest. In Spring 2020, The Standard will digitally release their first single recording of Justin Binek’s composition, Reparations, and in Spring 2021, the ensemble will release their second studio album.

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