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In early July I joined East Sussex Music service's primary curriculum leader, Alexandra Dalton, in Eastbourne for its first electric violin improvising summer school, which welcomed 14 young string players of grade 5 standard and above from the county's schools. Yamaha has a great range of 'Silent' violins and electric violins which we've already seen used most effectively as a way to (re)motivate teenaged string players and provide a range of new creative possibilities which can challenge, stimulate and broaden their approach to string playing. So I was delighted that we were able to support this event with the loan of a range of 4- and 5-stringed Yamaha electric violins for the use of participants who didn't have access to an electric violin.

We had a fantastic workshop last Saturday, 21st March, kindly hosted by Access To Music (ATM) at their Hackney premises, the British Academy of New Music (BANM). The day was led by international jazz piano star, Julian Joseph, and the inspirational jazz educator and musician, Richard Michael.

More than 20 teachers attended, including some of ATM's own teaching staff, and were joined by class and instrumental teachers from as far afield as Hampshire and Bucks! In his 35 years or so of teaching jazz, Richard's philosophy has always been to keep it simple. Considering that jazz improvisation is psychologically challenging for good musicians who come to jazz later in their musical careers, this approach was very welcome!

With some great piano accompaniments from Julian, Richard led an energetic physical workout at the beginning of the day, with shouts, stamps, claps and body movements, all designed to get us really feeling the rhythm which, as he says, is central to playing with a true jazz feel. Everyone felt energised after this and it really helped us all get into the swing of the vocal improvisations that followed.

Later in the day the workshop focussed on the business of leading improvisations with 11-19s and some brave volunteers, who ventured to try the approach Richard had modelled, were surprised at how well they had done in such a short time!

Richard Michael and Julian Joseph will run further workshops in this series. Others will be led by Andrea Vicari and Neil Cowley. Teachers relatively or completely new to jazz impro may join any of the remaining workshops, free, by booking with Angela Whittington.

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!

On June 13th the fledgeling London International Music Show - now arguably the major music trade show in the UK - holds its Education Day. Yamaha will be running drum taster sessions for beginners of all ages on a first-come-first-served basis. Teachers and children (aged 9+) will be taught some simple drum patterns and techniques featuring Yamaha's groundbreaking DTX electronic drum kits and practice pads. The session will end with playing along to a CD - and all that in less than 30 minutes!

For those considering whole-class drum kit tuition as part of wider opportunities, the group teaching model we use for drum kit is highly effective and enormous fun for the participants. Spectators are welcome too but we hope you'll come along and have a go.

Click here to register for LIMS' Education Day.

Yamaha will be exhibiting at the London International Music Show, from 12th - 15th June, and we're also providing activities on the special education day, Friday 13th June, including an electronic drum workshop and a session on electric strings, featuring Yamaha Silent Strings.

There'll be a wide range of Yamaha instruments and equipment that will be of interest to education users. It will be a great opportunity to see the new the more traditional Yamaha instruments - whose great build quality makes them a must for school use - alongside the Pocketrak 2G mp3 recorder, and the groundbreaking Tenori-on, too. I'll be on the Yamaha stand on Education Day to tell people about Yamaha Music Friends (this community) and encourage more teachers and musicians working in education to join us.

The entire British music industry will be represented and will also be providing workshop sessions on education day. I strongly recommend that you register for this event and hope to see you all there! Click here for further details.