Meet Barry Cogert

Today we’d like to introduce you to Barry Cogert. They and their team shared their story with us below:

Southern California native Barry Cogert’s love of music began during high school in the late 1970’s playing bass in “Willie Aames and Paradise,” a rock band that toured the country and performed on several television variety shows.

Putting himself through college with help from the EOP (Educational Opportunity Program), Barry went on to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree in music from California State University, Long Beach in 1988.

While performing at Disneyland, the Crystal Cathedral and several Southern California venues, the idea for an alternative jazz education course was born. Barry collaborated with co-founder Mark Barnes to begin the Jazz Angels, a public benefit non-profit corporation. Barry wrote and received the 2006 Performing Artist Fellowship Grant from the Arts Council for Long Beach. This allowed him to team up with arranger and saxophonist Albert Alva and launch the first Jazz Angels band with ten musicians ages 11-14.

Receiving the Arts Council for Long Beach’s Distinguished Artist of the Year 2007 brought community awareness to the Jazz Angels and made it possible for Barry to expand the program beyond one band and to include all Long Beach schools as well as other educational institutions.

In addition to the core programs and with the help of many supporters, Jazz Angels musicians released an age-appropriate documentary on the history of jazz in 2015, which can be viewed for free online by any educational organization. In 2020 we published an improvisation guide and distributed it for free to students in Paramount schools. The guide is in English and Spanish and comes complete with video tutorials, sheet music and play a long tracks students can access 24/7 from their phones or Chromebooks. In 2022 we produced a 2-episode variety show, Jazz Live with the Way Cool Jazz Angels, which features our youth bands, interviews with students and professionals, highlights Jazz Icons and local Long Beach Jazz Venues.

Jazz Angels bands have performed at hundreds of community events and continue to grow with the concept of creating a safe and non-judgmental environment for our youth to explore the creative side of their minds.

Jazz Angels programs teach jazz/heritage appreciation and music performance. They help develop the ‘whole child’ with life lessons that transcend music and promote ‘giving back’ to the community.

We recently realigned our focus to provide music education/experiences for underserved youth who are the most impacted by lack of opportunity/access to our empowering programming. With grants and other fundraising, we now have over 20 youth bands playing together every week in Long Beach and Paramount schools as well as community programs.

Now entering our 18th year with studio sessions as well as during and after school programs, the Jazz Angels have grown to empower and inspire over 3000 young musicians ages 11-17 throughout the greater Southern California area.

The Jazz Angels is a place where musicians of all levels can build their self-confidence and teamwork skills through learning to improvise and play jazz with professional musicians. Jazz Angels’ musicians experience a sense of joy and fulfillment while they carry forward the legacy of jazz, an American art form. These skills and experiences have a positive impact all areas of their life.

The primary focus of our main gala Jazz on the Patio, this year is to broaden our Long Beach/Paramount underserved youth programming and expand it to Compton and Wilmington. Last year Tom Scott was our guest, and he will our celebrity guest again this year. The event is on Sunday, 8/27/2023 from 3-7pm at On the Greens catering & conference center: 5660 Orangewood Ave, Cypress, CA 90630

The mission of Jazz Angels is to create an environment for young musicians to play and help preserve jazz, to build self-esteem, confidence, and leadership skills, to promote community involvement and jazz. And to create engaging in-school and after-school programs that develop the “whole child” and lessen the social and mental stresses that continue to plague the young people we serve.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No, not a smooth road. Immersing myself in the nonprofit world required I attend several workshops and seek mentoring from people with nonprofit experience. As a nonprofit, it was extremely challenging assembling the right Board of Directors to help guide the organization. There were times when we were 100% volunteer organization and other times where we had fallen through the cracks of nonprofit reporting, all kinds of related fines and extra paperwork which needed to be provided in order to get us to the proper nonprofit status. Once we had lasted past five years, it was obvious with the right group of people and remaining focused on our mission to empower young people and preserve jazz, the organization could sustain itself.

Other challenges included finding a passionate group of people to help teach the program and to have them be supported by a Board of Directors with experience. When the pandemic hit we were faced with incredible challenges, but we designed and implemented a unique way of programming so students could connect with each other even though they were at home. We applied for and received funding making it possible to get materials, recording equipment, devices and instruments to children’s homes. This created a level field of presentation during our video classes and online performances.

We are now at a place where we have a staff of ten teachers, an office manager and four assistants. We are setting our sites to grow even beyond LA County and into other areas.

While there were, and probably will continue to be, struggles and challenges as well as long hours, the reward of seeing what happens to young people who are in our program and then to what happens to them after they’ve experienced our program is extremely rewarding. We are doing great things in the community and helping students develop into compassionate and productive adults who support their neighborhoods. And we have helped to produce some fabulous and famous musicians as well.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I did not set out to be the Director of a nonprofit music education organization when I started my path to becoming a musician. I did not get good grades in school even though I tried very very hard.

For several years I specialized in playing bass in a variety of settings, that led me to specializing in making people feel good about the musical experience I provided. About 18 years ago, I began specializing in teaching children how to play jazz which evolved into teaching children how to become passionate and productive adults.

These days I am certainly known for jazz angels, I’m very proud that I started this company with a small grant and ten children and now we have a big staff and have impacted over 3000 children. Things that sent me apart is I have developed an ability to recognize what needs to be changed in order to have a good outcome, whether it’s arranging music for people, providing music for an event or coordinating curriculum and lesson plans with school teachers to get the most out of their students and help them to realize they can do something special.

If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I was a pretty happy child even though I had to overcome some challenging obstacles. I was very sick when I was five years old, one of my siblings is bipolar, I had some other challenges going through middle and high school. My interest weren’t very focused until my senior year in high school when I took up playing the bass and found that music provided me a sense of calm and is very therapeutic and helping me get through my high school and early college years. I’ve had several different jobs ranging from door-to-door sales to construction to food service to auto repair and just about everything in between. I wound up taking some personal development classes as well as some leadership courses that helped me get in touch with what I wanted to do and gave me the tools to make all that happen.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jazzangels.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jazzangelslb/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jazzangelsLB/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrErz8gozOwTE_qV6-L7iaw