For me this was a breakthrough day for my own playing. Denys Baptiste's skilled direction of our Combo session this week brought us to a point where the rhythm section (including piano) was finally beginning to really gel and members of the combo beginning to listen to each other a much more. The front line - our 4 saxes and trombone players - are all very good players in their teens and Denys helped them interact a lot more during the performance, listening more closely to each other's solos and passing melodic fragments from one solo to the next.

My personal brick wall at the start of the course has been 2-handed comping and even this began to come together today. The course maestro, Jamey Aebersold dropped into our rehearsal a couple of times and gave me some superb guidance on both soloing and comping - thanks Jamey! As well as the tunes where the chords come thick and fast - particularly challenging for a fledgeling jazz pianist sightreading the chords in the unfamiliar tunes and having to choose good chord voicings and suitable scales for impro on the spot! - Denys had us play a modal piece with extended periods over each chord. The horns found this particularly challenging as a musical result happens only when you do more than just find notes that fit. Denys was very helpful in getting them to think about shaping a solo and not giving away all their ideas in every repeat. Modal jazz seems to demand perhaps a more meditative approach, where restrictions can reap rather special dividends. This is something I can now take away and develop further.

My study of McCoy Tyner's playing over the past couple of years, really helped me in the modal piece. I found some of the voicings with much less brain work and I was for the first time able to concentrate on building what I think was my most interesting solo so far this week. (Note to self: practise doing this with tunes with a faster harmonic rate too!)

I loved Dan Haerle's piano masterclass today. Dan really focussed on 2-handed piano voicings that use a complete major or minor triad in the right hand. Fore example, an A13b9 chord had us using root and 7 in the LH (A and G) while the RH played an F#maj triad over the top (provinding the 3, 13 and b9) - a fabulously exotic sound, which his excellent book 'Jazz Piano Voicing Skills' is now in my growing pile of great publications to take home and work on. (Additional note to self: leave the credit card at home next time!)

The day culminated in a concert by our tutors (some shown here, course leader Jamey Aebersold centre, on sax) - stunning and inspirational players all! It showed us how some of the best US and UK jazz performers can paint a wonderful melodic, harmonic, rhythmic and textural picture, drawing of course on their immense experience, technique and profound musicianship. They provided a great musical model for all of us on the course, which I'm sure we'll have in mind when we give our more modest final combo performances during tomorrow's final concert.