Two weeks after the season finale of the East Meets West Jazz Jam Session, East End Jazz, the nonprofit performance and educational organization directed by the bassist Iris Ornig, will launch Tiny Toes and the Jazz Crew, an interactive concert series designed to bridge the gap between early childhood playtime and the professional performing arts.
Nursery rhymes will blend with jazz standards on Saturday at the Southampton Cultural Center. Sets performed by a quintet featuring Ornig on bass will start at 10:30 a.m. and 12:15 p.m. The concerts are free, though donations will be accepted. R.S.V.P.s are required at bit.ly/4wyZiNV.
Tiny Toes and the Jazz Crew was born from the idea that children’s music deserves the same improvisational depth and rhythmic complexity as a night at a jazz club. The program integrates foundational jazz traditions with childhood favorites, creating a “musical playground” for all ages.
Ornig is a hired bassist for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s WeBop Family Jazz Band, an eight-week workshop that introduces music and stories from America’s jazz tradition to listeners ages 8 months to 8 years and their families. “Every eight weeks,” she told The Star, “they introduce a specific theme,” such as Kansas City or New Orleans, “and then they talk about Count Basie and Kansas City, talk about Louis Armstrong and New Orleans.”
“I’m really intrigued by that,” she said, “to have little kids already introduced to jazz. I think it’s very important to introduce any age group, 1 to 99, to the arts.”
She described a program and performance in which nursery rhymes are combined with a jazz tune — for example, “If You’re Happy and You Know It” paired with Charles Mingus’s “Nostalgia in Times Square,” and “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” with Thelonious Monk’s “Green Chimneys.” “I just segue,” she said. “Then the kids remember that song. All the nursery rhymes are in a jazz feel with blue notes.”
“I think it will be a really fun project where the parents love it, because they most likely heard those songs from their parents,” Ornig said. “I just want to continue that.”
Joining her in performance will be Natalia Rahim, a vocalist who will encourage all to join in (children typically “jump in and sing right away,” Ornig said), Jane Hastay on piano, John Ludlow on sax, and Brian Woodruff on drums.
