EDUCATION PROGRAMS

With REVA’s Bay Area board members, we consult and partner with existing California music education initiatives, seeking to spread resources more equitably across programs. Conversations and sharing brokered in the past include Berkeley Public Schools and Lafayette Summer Music Camp, Oakland Public Conservatory and Cazadero Family Performing Arts Camp. We extend outreach to help connect scholarships for music programs with the students who need them, and to share music and dance equipment as possible throughout the area.

(Pictured to the left - dance floor used by Cazadero Family Camp and Oakland Public Conservatory)

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Strings, Jazz, Musicianship, Listening…..taking the creative experience online with our experienced faculty.

Meet our instructors!

Facilitating networks of women working to give girls access to safe and empowering jazz education, and providing opportunities for women to play and be visible in the jazz community. Our initiative brought 3 jazz women player/instructors from South Africa and Botswana to speak and play in New Orleans and New York City. These women designed and run a girls jazz camp, Jazz Camp for Female Instrumentalists Mamelodi (JCFI) and a music school back home.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, REVA has responded with the creation of an online program: Global Jazzwomen Hangout, hosted by Sibongile Buda (aka Ms. Buda Bass), South African jazz bassist/entrepreneur and founder of JCFI.

Other projects include connecting existing jazz programs for girls, and creating partnerships with educational and performance programs looking to include more women and girls.

REVA’s first Arts Business Seed Grant has been awarded to saxophonist/clarinetist and arts administrator Nokwanda Nkala of Durban, South Africa (2022).

Nokwanda Nkala is active professionally as a jazz saxophonist and classical clarinetist as well as working in arts administration, including her own entrepreneurial ventures. An accomplished and resourceful musician, Nkala has been repairing her own horns for years. Through this grant, she will be receiving training videos, tools, online support and coaching to help set up her own instrument repair business in South Africa. You can read more about Ms. Nkala here.

In 2025, two more recipients have been awarded the same Grant, Jaz Mokoena and Leatile Tev Serojane. They are both saxophone players, and active in their local educational and musical networks. Jaz is a member of the JCFI Ensemble.
You can connect with Jaz here.
Find out more about Leatile here.

As part of the Arts Business Seed Grant, REVA is facilitating a creation of a ‘mutual aid’ network utilizing Reva framework and volunteers. Based on the work experience of the first Business Seed Grant recipient, and through training and peer-to-peer consultation and advisory scheme, REVA is connecting specialists in South Africa and the US, so that the South African partners can create a sustainable resource and grow the network of instrument rapair specialists and services.

Helping to keep music instruction affordable and creating future music leaders: working with underserved populations, the RMM program trains serious teenage musicians to teach younger kids in their community, providing paid jobs with training for the teens and free lessons for their young students.

In partnership with Arts for Art, the Visionary Youth Orchestra program gives under-served musicians from diverse backgrounds, ages 11 to 18, opportunities to strengthen their understanding and skill as Free Jazz improvisers, ensemble members, composers, and performers. Under the direction of Jeff Lederer and Jessica Jones, VYO provides an environment for young musicians to learn, interpret, discuss and perform the works of Anthony Braxton, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden, and other Free Jazz luminaries. We teach young musicians to conceptualize music aurally and through traditional and graphic notation as they collectively explore the vast possibilities of rhythm, form and sound.