The Alaadeen Ensemble (2024) is the newest Kansas City Area Youth Jazz program element.
The KCAYJ Fellows selected for this ensemble will perform Mr. Ahmed Alaadeen’s original music and works associated with his broad musical palette.
I am honored and pleased to be the very first clinician to serve as musical director of The Alaadeen Ensemble in both performances and the 2024 FELLOWS album recording session.
Mr. and Mrs. Alaadeen were the first people in the Kansas City music scene and Jazz community to actually welcome me back home as a professional musician.
The Alaadeen’s had a boutique label that they formed to release his discography into the mainstream commercial marketplace and a publishing company for his original music.
They brought me onboard as a staff writer with the publishing company and as the operations manager of their label in 2002. I worked with them for 5 years.
I met Alaadeen by searching for an established Jazz Master to study with and mentor me in the business paradigms of the civilian music industry.
ABOVE PHOTO: A special Jay McShann Tribute Big Band at the Gem Theater, Kansas City. Musicians shown are (L to R) Gerald Dunn, Zach Albetta, Craig Aiken, Christopher Burnett, Dennis Winslett, Al Pearson, Bobby Watson, Godfrey Powell, Clint Ashlock, Alaadeen, Ken Clond, Nick Howell, Louis C. Neal, and Kerry Strayer. Not shown but present is the pianist Harold O’Neal. Photograph taken in 2007 by Jerry Lockett.
He also included me among the cats and sponsored me into the musicians union Local 34-627 as a full professional member.
Alaadeen’s AllMusic database listing:
🔗 allmusic.com/artis…
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Kansas City Area Youth Jazz program website:
🔗 YouthJazz.us
He and I became good friends. I was already an accomplished professional musician in my 40s and had just concluded a very successful career with military bands when he took me as a student. I learned another level of the truth about the essence of this music from him. Alaadeen was my last great Jazz teacher.
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Musings In Cb: “Time Through The Ages”
PHOTO by Corinna Gray Photography (2023)
Christopher and Terri (Anderson) Burnett established their branch of The Burnett Family in March of 1979 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They are professional musicians, educators, and entrepreneurs based in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area.