The Baltimore Jazz Education Project (BJEP) is hosting free jazz clinics led by celebrated saxophone player and professor George Garzone in November 2025.
Garzone is a professor at Berklee School of Music in Boston, and has toured around the world with his trio, The Fringe. He’s a veteran jazzman and has appeared on more than 20 recordings. A sought-after educator, he pioneered the Triadic Chromatic Approach to improvisation in jazz.
The BJEP is the brainchild of Gregory Thompkins, a local saxophone teacher and student of Garzone’s. Thompkins has taught sax for 40 years and has been a student of Garzone’s for 20 years.
“The Baltimore jazz education project helps fund students with lessons and instruments, and every year we would do a concert that would feature our students in a guest jazz artist,” Thompkins told Baltimore Fishbowl. “For the last probably 10 years, we featured Claire Daly, who was one of the world’s great baritone saxophone players. Claire studied with George Garzone, and so there was a connection with me, Claire, and George.”
Sadly, Daly passed away last year. Garzone performed at the memorial for her in New York. Thompkins attended the memorial, and Garzone approached him about coming to Baltimore this fall. The free clinics, culminating in a performance, are a result of that. Thompkins has been working on this since February 2025.
BJEP began in 2007 with Greg and Sally Vockel Poling. The Polings are the program’s sponsors, but Thompkins’ connection to them began when Greg began to take lessons from him.
“Greg Poling has been taking lessons with me for over 20 years, and he liked the progress that my students were making, and he wanted to be part of it,” Thompkins said. “So, he said that he would put together a nonprofit, and he would fund it, and I would run it. Since 2007 we’ve raised over $200,000 and we spread that out in the greater Baltimore community by buying instruments, providing lessons, doing concerts, doing clinics.”
The BJEP is free for participants. The program is about the music and the education. Thompkins’ students begin as young as nine or 10 years old and go up from there. He does the teaching and running around; the Polings do the funding and the paperwork. Thompkins also plays gigs and performs around town, but his primary focus is as a teacher.
Even as a teacher, he still takes lessons with Garzone, who is on sabbatical right now. That is the reason he has time to come to Baltimore for these clinics.
“The main thing for anybody that would want to know [coming] to any of these clinics is that George Garzone is one of the few teachers globally that understands John Coltrane’s system of harmony,” Thompkins said. “And not only that, to teach it. Some people know it, but they can’t teach it. I’ve been doing it with him for over 20 years, and I’m still learning. It’s never ending.”
Thompkins said when he has a lesson with Garzone, he takes two days off, arranges for transportation to Boston, and does what he must to fit it into his schedule because of how busy Garzone is.
“He’s a busy guy,” Thompkins said. “He’s got a lot of students. He just came back from 10 days of teaching in China. So, he’s got students all over the world that are like me, that maybe run a jazz department or a saxophone department. They go, ‘Hey, George, can you come and teach here for a weekend or so?’ His time is limited.”
That should not intimidate newcomers from coming to the clinics, however. Thompkins feels strongly that anyone can get something out of it.
“Hey, if the world’s greatest baseball player is gonna give clinics, I don’t care what level you’re at, it would behoove you to just sit there and watch,” Thompkins said.
Information about the three free jazz clinics with George Garzone are listed below, and information is also available at the Baltimore Jazz Education Project (BJEP) website.
FREE CLINICS:
- Thursday, Nov. 6, 5:30–7:30 p.m.: Towson University Jazz/Commercial Music Program, Room Ca 3071
- Friday, Nov. 7, 5–8 p.m.: Divinity Lutheran Church, 1220 Providence Road, Baltimore
- Saturday, Nov. 8, 5–8 p.m.: Divinity Lutheran Church, 1220 Providence Road, Baltimore
Registration is not required. Participants should bring their own instruments to the clinics.
On Sunday, Nov. 9 at 5 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Garzone is performing two shows at the Keystone Korner Baltimore Jazz Restaurant and Bar. Tickets range from $15-$45.
