September 13, 2008; Monterey, CA; Berklee College of Music and the Monterey Jazz Festival announced today that trumpeter Aaron Bahr of Lafayette, California is the twelfth recipient of the Jimmy Lyons Scholarship at Berklee, a major music education prize. The full-tuition scholarship is named in honor of the festival’s late founder, James L. (Jimmy) Lyons, who began the festival 51 years ago with jazz education at its core.

2008 Lyons Scholarship winner Aaron Bahr is a gifted trumpeter, who graduated this past spring from Campolindo High School in Moraga, and began his Berklee studies in Boston this month. He is quick to credit his Bay Area-based teachers: Jay Rizzetto, for his steady growth on the trumpet; and tenor saxophonist Michael Zilber, who has been central to Aaron’s composition studies.

“By the time I was twelve and playing in my middle school band, I knew what I wanted to do every day of my life,” says Aaron. Now an accomplished performer, he remains passionately dedicated to making music and has been playing at various San Francisco Bay Area jazz venues. He has earned numerous recognitions, including DownBeat Student Music Awards for Best Jazz Soloist and Best Original Song.

He has also been selected to national and regional honor organizations, such as the Gibson/Baldwin GRAMMY Jazz Ensemble, the Brubeck Institute Summer Jazz Colony, the Monterey Next Generation Jazz Orchestra, SFJAZZ High School All-Stars, and the Jazzschool’s Jazz Workshop. Aaron is already enjoying his studies at Berklee, where he plans to dual-major in Jazz Performance and either Jazz Composition or Film Scoring.

MJF Trustee Carsbia Anderson, chair of the Festival’s Education Committee, and Festival General Manager Tim Jackson will make the presentation to Aaron Bahr at the Festival on Sunday, September 21 at 2:00 p.m., on the Jimmy Lyons Stage.

Bahr will sit in with the Berklee Latin Jazz All-Stars (DownBeat Magazine’s 2008 Best College Jazz Band) at the Monterey Jazz Festival at 8:00 p.m. Friday evening on the Garden Stage, and again on Saturday afternoon at 5:00 p.m. in the Coffee House Gallery.

The Lyons Scholarship is awarded each year -- after live auditions at Monterey’s Next Generation Festival in the spring -- to one California music student, in recognition of their outstanding talent. Because it is a full-tuition, renewable award, satisfactory academic and musical progress in each successive year will allow each Lyons Scholar to attend Berklee through graduation, entirely tuition-free.

Auditions for the Lyons Scholarship were made via audition tape to the Berklee Scholarship Committee, which selected a group of 30 young Californians for live audition in Monterey. The students selected to audition are required to file an application for admission to Berklee, which must be approved by the college in order to compete for the scholarship. Auditions were held on the weekend of April 3 - 6, 2008, during the Festival’s annual Next Generation Festival, and were conducted, as always, by senior Berklee faculty who come to California exclusively for this purpose. The college also awarded several other, significant tuition scholarships at the auditions.

Berklee College of Music was founded on the revolutionary principle that the best way to prepare students for careers in music was through the study and practice of contemporary music. For over 60 years, the college has evolved constantly to reflect the state of the art of music and the music business. With over a dozen performance and nonperformance majors, a diverse and talented student body representing over 70 countries, and a music industry "who's who" of alumni, Berklee is the world's premier learning lab for the music of today -- and tomorrow.