Moon Elementary Students Sing with Grammy-Winning Jazz Artist

Kim Nazarian might be best recognized as the Grammy-winning soprano for New York Voices, a jazz quartet with seven full-length records its belt. 

Earlier this week Nazarian, who was a founding member of the group, stopped by to teach 280 students in fourth and fifth grade a lesson in jazz.

"She was really going over sound production with the voice and going over style, in terms of what is samba and what is swing, and that's a whole education there," said Lisa Jaworowski, a Moon Area music teacher. 

On March 6, Nazarian will perform two songs, jazz standards "One Note Samba" and "Straighten Up and Fly," with elementary choir students at the district's Music in Our Schools program. 

Students gathered in the high school choral room to rehearse with Nazarian, who tours for her solo career and teaches voice lessons at Bowling Green State University. 

Jaworowski said Nazarian frequently works with elementary and high school choirs. 

"The kids are very excited," she said. "For about six weeks we've been performing the songs and playing her music. When we introduced her to the kids she was this voice on a CD or in a video. Now she's a real person [to them]." 

Nazarian has been giving Jaworowski voice lessons for more than two years, and Jaworowski has used some of the jazz singer's techniques and warm-ups with her students. It was a dream of her's to have Nazarian perform with her students, she said. 

"I started seeing her for lessons every six to eight weeks," Jaworowski said. "I've been singing actively for 23 years, and I've learned more from [Nazarian] in two years than I did as a voice major during four years of college."

Jaworowski describes Nazarian as a "vocal technician" skilled at teaching others how to best use their voice. 

"Working with a college professor as a voice coach can be difficult. Some of them have operatic or jazz careers, but others have never really been performers, and some people sing well but don't know how they've done it," she said. "[Nazarian] is the real deal." 

Nazarian will perform with student choirs at the district-wide Music in Our Schools concert at 7 p.m. March 6 at the high school auditorium.