Yamaha Education News

Tomorrow's Warriors plays inspiring Jazz Experience gig at Ronnie Scott's

Tomorrow's Warriors at their Yamaha Jazz Experience gig, Ronnie Scott's, November 2010. (Photo: Bill C Martin)

Tomorrow's Warriors Biggish Band, the under-19 section winner of the 2010 Yamaha Jazz Experience competition, was awarded a gig at Ronnie Scott's as part of their prize fund. That gig took place on Saturday 20 November to a packed and highly appreciative house and provided a fitting conclusion to the first Jazz Experience programme, whose core aim was to inspire the next generation of young jazz musicians.

Tomorrow's Warriors (TW), the acclaimed charitable organisation led by double bassist Gary Crosby OBE and Janine Irons MBE, was established in 1991 to provide high-quality jazz education and professional artist development. It has proven its ability to nurture and develop talented young musicians, many of whom have become award-winning young jazz artists in their own right and some of whom now lead the training at TW. TW's alumni include now well respected jazz professionals, like Soweto Kinch, Denys Baptiste, Abram Wilson and Gary Crosby himself.

With this legacy behind them it must have been both a comfort and a source of additional pressure when the Biggish Band musicians were assembled in the Ronnie Scott's dressing room in an atmosphere of excited anticipation. Of course there were nerves but this band of talented young musicians had already come a long way, not just in successfully competing with Jazz Experience competition entrants from conservatoire junior departments, but in their own development as musicians.

Once on stage the nerves soon disappeared and we were treated to 45 minutes of communicative, creative and exciting playing. That the Yamaha Jazz Experience programme had contributed in some way to bringing these fine young players to one of the world's top jazz clubs is quite a landmark, and is one of the reasons why we've decided to run the programme again in 2011-12. But this opportunity, given to some of the country's best young players, has been possible thanks to the generosity of Ronnie Scott's and, indeed, to our other venue partners in the Jazz Experience programme: the 606 Club, the Bull's Head and the Cheltenham Jazz Festival. That the TW musicians rose to the occasion at Ronnie's is due both to their own dedication and practice but equally to the vision and hard work of the Tomorrow's Warriors leaders and tutors. They must be rightly proud!

I, for one, left the gig on a high and am very clear that we had witnessed the coming of age (musically, if not yet literally) of these young players and that we should expect them to make a huge impression on the music industry in the coming years and on the jazz community in particular.

by Bill C Martin

(posted: November 2010)