Yamaha Education News

Yamaha Works with Music Services on its Jazz Impro Competition

Pictured here: Yamaha 2008 Parliamentary Jazz scholars, Zem Audu (sax) and Rick Simpson (piano), an example of Yamaha's work with its artists and scholars to help inform and inspire teachers and learners

Thanking the UK's heads of school music services at the 2009 Federation of Music Services conference for their involvement in seven national Yamaha Jazz Experience workshops in March and April, Yamaha's education liaison manager, Bill C Martin announced the project's competition phase, starting in September 2009.

Some 142 teachers and music leaders took part in the initial workshops, of whom 38 percent were class music teachers, 47 percent were instrumental teachers from both the public and private sectors and 15 percent were community musicians and music leaders working in the non-formal education sector. Between them they represent more than 50,000 young people.

During this first phase the objective had been to identify those teachers who had little of no experience of jazz improvising and, through the one-day workshop tour - which worked with teachers in Portsmouth, London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, South Shields and Glasgow - to provide both information and inspiration to help those teachers develop their own improvising skills. Armed with new confidence and new clasroom ideas, these teachers will then be able to use improvising to help liberate young people's musical creativity and personal expression, and also tackle those thorny concepts, 'jazz' and 'improvise', whose presence in curriculum documents have taunted many teachers for more than two decades.

To highlight Yamaha's commitment to making a difference in music education, the company had engaged two if its 2009 Parliamentary Jazz Scholars, Rick Simpson (piano) and Zem Audu (sax), who impressed the audience of music service management teams. Yamaha collaborates with top artists, spanning all genres, and Yamaha Education is engaging some of these wonderful musicians to inform and inspire both teachers and learners. This is something which will develop in coming years and which was in clear evidence in the video clips of the Jazz Experience workshops, where leading musicians, of the calibre of Julian Joseph, Tim Garland, Peter Ind and Neil Cowley joined forces with Richard Michael and Andrea Vicari - both superb musicians in their own right and two of the UK's most inspiring jazz educators.

The Yamaha Jazz Experience competition is open to ensembles aged 11-19 and their music teachers and music leaders can apply to take part, having registered (free) on the Yamaha Education Friends' site. Ensembles will video a live improvised performance of a blues and a piece of their own choosing which features jazz-style improvising and send the video clips to Yamaha by end January 2010. Nine ensembles will then be shortlisted to perform at the finalists' event at Cheltenham Jazz festival on 1 May 2010. Further details are on Yamaha Education Friends.

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(Posted 3/6/09)