Jazz Great Herbie Hancock and Student Quintet to Perform

On Tuesday, April 19, 1 p.m. EDT, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, in conjunction with The Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz, will host 14-time Grammy Award-winning musician and Institute Chair Herbie Hancock, acclaimed jazz trumpet recording artist Sean Jones and the Institute’s “Peer-to-Peer Jazz Quintet” of Washington, DC students for a performance and a discussion about jazz and the importance of arts education.

Cardona will be “hands-on” at this event, as he’ll be playing Latin percussion drums, a life-long hobby. Arts education is a key element of the department’s priority to support students through pandemic response and recovery, as laid out by the secretary in his vision for education earlier this year. 

The event is part of the institute’s national Peer-to-Peer Education Program, which enables gifted student musicians to participate in week-long tours for their peers in other cities, alongside guest performers.  While the pandemic preempted the tours planned for the 2020-21 school year, the institute collaborated with the department to offer a virtual informance last year, which has been viewed more than 500,000 times on YouTube.

The performance will be livestreamed to hundreds of school districts nationwide and to the public through social media platforms. It will be livestreamed from the U.S. Department of Education and also available on and streamed on ED’s YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter accounts, as well as the Institute’s website, hancockinstitute.org.