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On 17 & 18 April, Andrea Vicari and Neil Cowley led two wonderful Jazz Experience workshops as part of Yamaha's 7-venue tour providing CPD for teachers and music leaders who are new to jazz and improvising.

Manchester, 17 April 2009 

The first was hosted by Manchester's prestigious Chetham's School of Music, which stepped in to provide a wonderful venue in their Baronial Hall when we were struggling to find a suitable venue.

Andrea had led our first in this workshop series (Portsmouth) back in March alongside Tim Garland. Class and peripatetic teachers from Manchester and way beyond (one had traveled from Northamptonshire!) enjoyed a day of some great 'ways in' to jazz impro and the pianists among them got some high-level input and help from the fantastic Neil Cowley. (One group is pictured here.)

The day at Chetham's included work on simple impro ideas and culminated in a group impro on the blues as well as on Cannonball Adderley's funky 'Walk Tall' and a host of other jazz standards, all of which provided great material for good players who are new to improvising.

Leeds, 18 April 2009

The second day took place at Leeds College of Music (LCM) where the class and instrumental teachers, mainly from the Leeds ArtForms music service - who did a great job in organising the day - were also joined by the four teachers from the Yamaha Music School in Doncaster. Once again Andrea and Neil did a wonderful job and we even captured a piano duet between the pair on video, which you can see on the Jazz Experience page. It turned out that none of the participants was either a bass player or drummer, so we were delighted to be joined by two 1st-year jazz degree students from LCM, on bass and drums, who provided such a solid rhythm section that it made it very easy for all the participants! Andrea can be seen far right directing the performance and Neil, far left, helping one of the piano players.