Yamaha Education Blog » National Youth Jazz Collective

Yesterday I visited a superb National Youth Jazz Collective (NYJC) workshop in Huddersfield which is part of a 4-weekend jazz workshop series for young people, also running in Kendal, Rotherham, Norfolk and Devon. Led by the visionary jazz composer/educator, Issie Barratt, the project uses some of the UK's top jazz musicians to provide coaching and inspiration which is giving the targeted young players the skills and confidence to enjoy playing a broad range of jazz and improvise with their peers.

One of the sessions I dropped in on yesterday involved players of varying abilities being coached through a very funky chord sequence (reminiscent of Miles Davis' 'So What?' from his 1959 'Kind Of Blue' album) where 8-bar sections over a single chord enabled new improvisers to find their way around the harmonic and scalic terrain with the minimum of stress and in a non-competitive, safe environment. Similar activities were being led skilfully by NYJC's jazz educators throughout the day. Though they each brought their own workshop styles and a range of different starting points, they very clearly shared the same, simple, common objective: to enable each of the young musicians to contribute creatively in an ensemble and enjoy the journey!

What NYJC is not trying to do is to 'convert' everyone to the jazz religion. What they are about is giving young people the creative skills, through improvising, which will liberate their personal expression and creativity. The fact that jazz is the playground on which this happens will no doubt provide a positive first encounter with the genre to most of the learners who attend the workshops. But the skills that jazz improvisers learn transcend musical genres and this hands the control over their musical destiny to the young people themselves. 

As our own Yamaha Jazz Experience project gathers momentum, we hope to be able to point our participants - both the young musicans and their teachers - to the activities of the likes of NYJC, for further skill development and, arguably more importantly, the simple joy of inventing music and performing with other musicians, regardless of their skill levels or experience.

NYJC is still a young organisation but I believe that, through its planned annual 5-centre workshop series and summer school for young people, it is set to make a powerful impact on young musicians' lives. All power to them, I say!