After four years, nearly two dozen graduates, and an extensive community outreach program, the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance is ending its collegiate program at Loyola University.

The Monk Institute Class of 2011

Monk Institute Board of Trustees Chairman Thelonious Monk, Jr. said in an April 13 letter addressed to the institute’s partners that the institute will end its current educational partnership with Loyola in May 2011.

“Recently, the Institute was approached by the Herb Alpert Foundation, a longtime Institute supporter, to consider becoming part of the Herb Alpert School of Music at the University of California, Los Angeles,” Thelonious Monk, Jr. said in the letter. “In September 2012, the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance will open at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. The current class of students will graduate from Loyola University New Orleans in just a few weeks, and the Institute will spend the next year preparing for the program at UCLA.”

While the educational program offered by the Monk Institute will end, Monk said the overall partnership will not.

“The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz is firmly committed to providing its jazz education programs across New Orleans,” he said in the letter. “The institute will continue to offer in-school and after-school instrument instruction, master classes, and outreach performances led by New Orleans-based musicians as well as visiting jazz masters. The Institute has always enjoyed a wonderful partnership with Loyola University New Orleans, and we are pleased that our office will remain on the Loyola campus. We will continue to collaborate with Loyola’s faculty and staff to offer our programs.”

Loyola University College of Music and Fine Arts Dean Donald Boomgaarden says the Monk Institute’s offices on the Loyola campus will remain open, and the university will not lose funding or accreditation as a result of the departure.

“The big change is that they are going to move their student collegiate program back to Los Angeles,” Boomgaarden says. “So those students won’t be involved in our own courses here working towards degrees, but I’m pretty optimistic that we’re still going to have a pretty great connection with the Monk Institute.”

After the current roster of six students—pianist Victor Gould, alto saxophonist Godwin Louis, tenor saxophonist Matt Marantz, drummer Nick Falk, bassist Hogyu Hwang, and trumpeter Billy Buss—graduate as the class of 2011, Boomgaarden said the Loyola music program will pick up right where it left off for the 2012 school year.

“We’ll still have the same program,” Boomgaarden says. “The Monk Institute came in and became a part of a preexisting program. We already have an extensive jazz program that studies also on a graduate level, so we’re not going to be losing any of the programs that we currently offer.”

Monk Institute spokeswoman Holly Wallace said a large chunk of the institute’s involvement in the music and culture of New Orleans has always occurred outside the classroom, and those activities are not scheduled to end.

“In the past four years, thousands of public school students have attended our Jazz in the Classroom programs and education tours, most recently the Jazz Across America program with Bobby Watson and Chris Thomas King,” Wallace says. “In partnership with the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation and the Contemporary Arts Center, we’ve presented free public concerts by jazz greats visiting the institute, including Brian Blade, John Patitucci andKurt Rosenwinkle. Snug Harbor and Preservation Hall have collaborated with us to showcase NEA Jazz Masters Barry Harris and Jimmy Heath, and we look forward to working together to build on these successes to present jazz artists who otherwise don’t tour through New Orleans.”

Wallace said there has been no love lost between the institute, Loyola, and the city of New Orleans, despite the announced departure of the collegiate program, a sentiment echoed by Boomgaarden.

“I’m a huge fan of the Monk Institute,” Boomgaarden says. “Tom Carter, the president of the Monk Institute, and I have become good friends over the years. I wish them well in that new environment in L.A., and look forward to continuing to work together here in New Orleans.”