The Oakland Eastside All-Star Ensemble (OEASE) is a big band co-founded in East Oakland during the summer of 2012 by Ms. Helena Moss-Jack and currently led by OUSD music educator Zack Pitt-Smith. OEASE is comprised of Oakland’s new wave of community leaders young musician-scholars.

The Ensemble is a ten-month, pre-college and pre-professional instrumental music and leadership fellowship program, an advanced training that offers a high performing group of responsible students the time and individual attention necessary to gain an unparalleled standard of scholarship, musical ability, discipline and respect for their craft. The OEASE Fellowship program offerings aim to advance comprehensive learning employed to steer Oakland and East Bay students ages 12–19 toward community leadership, gainful employment, entrepreneurship, college matriculation and graduation. We especially hope to raise new educators, artists, and media change-makers.

OEASE is sponsored by Oakland-based nonprofit Elevate Oakland. Donations will help sustain the OEASE program and fund traveling performance opportunities for student musicians.

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ABOUT ELEVATE OAKLAND:

Founded by Sheila E., Lynn Mabry, Yoshie Akiba of Yoshi’s Oakland and Jason Hofmann, Elevate Oakland is a non-profit that provides culturally vibrant art and music programs to Oakland’s youth. Their mission to provide students with opportunities to engage in art and music programming has led Elevate Oakland to partner with public schools to meet a wide variety of needs, ranging from artists in residence programs providing hands-on music curriculum during the school day to facilitating opportunities for students to perform alongside local professional musicians. To date, Elevate Oakland has successfully served over 3,000 youth at over 30 Oakland public schools. Across its programs, the focus is not on creating professional musicians, but instead on utilizing music and the arts as a conduit to get students excited about learning.

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