Haley Ducharme – The Tefft Foundation Jazz Music Award 2024

This years recipient of the jazz music award composes, studies music theory and plays multiple instruments – the piano, alto and tenor sax, viola, clarinet and flute.

Haley Ducharme’s love of playing jazz started when she and a few friends met after school six years ago to play in a pick up combo. She has shared her musical skills while playing in jazz bands, ensembles, small groups, and music festivals.

At first, she played saxophone in the school band. After playing in music festivals and six ensembles, she realized that what she really loved was playing jazz. She became proficient in playing the clarinet, viola, flute and the alto or tenor sax. She played in the New Hampshire Jazz Orchestra at the professional level, in a saxophone quartet, and at the UNH Summer Youth Music School.

Haley Ducharme – The Tefft Foundation Preservation of American Heritage Award 2024

The Preservation Award was first given in 2020. Tonight, a second New Hampshire senior is taking home the foundation’s Preservation of American Culture and Heritage Award.

Jazz music is an American institution that began in the African-American communites of New Orleans in the late 19th century. It has since evolved into a major form of music.

Six years ago, a young saxophone player became infatuated with jazz, playing with a few friends after school. She couldn’t get enough of it, she played the clarinet, the flute and the saxophone with the New Hampshire Jazz Orchestra, she plays in six ensembles, she’s a three time recipient of the Clark Terry Jazz Festival’s Outstanding Musician Award, she arranges, produces, records, plays in gigs, and she knows who Nat King Cole is.

This fall she will be bringing her three primary instruments, saxophone, viola and clarinet to the University of Connecticut to major in music education.

In five years, she will have earned a bachelor of arts in jazz studies, a bachelor of science in music education, and a master of arts in curriculum and instruction. Her future and her life will be sharing love of jazz with her peers, students and anyone lucky enough to hear her play or be her student.

Wynton Marsalis said it best: “Jazz is America’s past and its potential”. That sounds just like Haley to me.