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The hugely successful, high-powered and influential partnership between Yamaha and Classic FM, in association with Jazzwise magazine, Jazz Services, the All-Party Parliamentary Jazz Appreciation Group & PPL, continued into its third year with a wonderful event last night at Portcullis House, Westminster, when another six scholarships of £1000 each were awarded to six outstanding young jazz students, nominated by the heads of jazz at six of the UK's leading conservatoires. The annual scheme is designed to support young, emerging jazz musicians by providing valuable funding and important marketing support through performance and recording opportunities.

This year the six jazz scholars to benefit from the scheme are: Alex Munk, a guitarist studying at Leeds College of Music; drummer, Daoud Merchant, a student at Guildhall School of Music & Drama; drummer, Gethin Jones from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama; pianist Kit Downes, a scholar at the Royal Academy of Music; Mark Perry who studies trumpet at Trinity College of Music andSam Wooster who studies trumpet at Birmingham Conservatoire.

All six scholarship winners performed live at the All Party Parliamentary Jazz Appreciation Group's annual Summer Jazz event in the Atlee Suite, Portcullis House, House of Commons on Wednesday 1st July, where award-winning jazz broadcaster, Helen Mayhew, presented the scholarships to the six award winners.

Guests at the event included members of parliament from both Houses who are interested in jazz, along with invitees from the jazz community, press and venue operators. Additionally all six scholarship award winners will be featured alongside some of Yamaha's most highly respected and established jazz artists on 'The Yamaha New Jazz Sessions 2009' promotional CD, to be recorded and cover-mounted on Jazzwise magazine's Xmas and New Year double issue, with the chance to perform live at the CD launch at London's internationally renowned 606 Jazz Club on 25 November 2009. Last year's acclaimed 'Yamaha New Jazz Sessions' CD, produced by Andy Ross at Astar Studios, included tracks by Julian Joseph, Gwilym Simcock and Jason Rebello and, with 15,000 copies circulated,  and was one of the most significant jazz albums of the year.

Congratulations to the award winners and we will follow their careers with interest in the coming years.

I spent a wonderful day yesterday at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama (RWCMD) for the preliminary judging round of the Yamaha Music Foundation of Europe competition. Each year the YMFE competition provides a performance platform and scholarships worth £2000 each for three 18-25s studying music full-time in the UK. The current round focuses on the UK's finest young brass and woodwind players and ten of them will receive a finalists' recital at Birmingham Conservatoire on 5th February 2009.

The event has been expertly co-ordinated for some years by Ian Frankland, who is in charge of Yamaha's brass and woodwind marketing and is a fine horn player himself. For yesterday's shortlisting session the judging team consisted of two of the UK's most respected brass and woodwind performers and educators, John Reynolds and Chris Mowatt. Clarinettist, John Reynolds, is currently Head of Woodwind at RWCM, has played for all of the BBC Orchestras and was Principal Clarinet in Kent Opera. John has held teaching positions at the Guildhall School of Music and at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester. He was Director of Woodwind Studies at the Royal Northern College of Music prior to his appointment at RWCMD. He is a senior moderator, trainer, examiner, and consultant for the Associated Board. Trombonist, Chris Mowatt, has had a sparkling career that has seen him as Head of Brass at the RWCMD and Principal Trombone of the Halle, Royal Philharmonic and BBC Symphony Orchestras. Chris was also a member of the Phillip Jones Brass Ensemble and later London Brass. I was the third judge and would have the casting vote in case of any major disputes. Happily, there were none!

Our task was to select just 10 players who would go through to the final event. We heard some stunning performances from every type of brass and woodwind instrument. On one or two occasions we did struggle to hear the detail of a performance, because insufficient care had been taken with the recording process or because a candidate had accepted a performance in which the soloist and accompanist weren't quite in tune with each other. In two cases the recording was so unclear that we were just unable to hear enough to include the performer in the shortlist. But the remainder of the submissions gave us some wonderful listening moments. As we listened we each produced independent selections and by the end of the day we discovered that we'd agreed on 6 of the ten finalists. After some negotiation and debate the remaining 4 were soon confirmed. 

So our final event will now consist of 3 clarinets, 2 flutes, 2 trumpets, 2 saxes and 1 bass trombone! Details of the 10 final performers will be announced in due course, 3 of whom will receive awards of £2000 each towards their professional development and launching their careers.

We'd like to extend out sincere thanks to RWCMD and our wonderful judges, John Reynolds and Chris Mowatt, for their help and support in this preliminary round. Members of the public will be able to attend the final day at the Birmingham Conservatoire on 5th February 09. We will announce ticket details soon.