INTRODUCTION TO JAZZ – WORKSHOP

Bristol Jazz Festival is happy to offer a workshop tailored to the younger members of our music community. Lead by Craig Crofton, one of Bristol’s most preeminent jazz educators and players and featuring members of Ed Leaker’ s Wells Cathedral Jazz Combo, who will be playing in the Café/Bar just before the workshop!

The Wells Cathedral School Jazz Combo are the school’s premier jazz musicians. All members of the group study at the school as Specialist Musicians. Recent pupils have gone on to study jazz at The Royal Academy of Music, Trinity College, London and The Guildhall School of Music & Drama as well as numerous other specialist courses in the UK and abroad. The ensemble has performed and given workshops nationally and have worked with many eminent jazz musicians including Pee Wee Ellis, Iain Ballamy, Jason Rebello, Tommy Smith, Gareth Lockrane and Mark Nightingale.

This workshop will be an introduction into the modern jazz ensemble and will start with a presentation of the different roles each member of a modern jazz ensemble plays.  It will also offer some interactive, fun activities with rhythm that all attendees can join in with no matter what level or instrument.  The amount of participation in this workshop is up to the individual and attendees can simply come to listen and ask questions rather than play if they like. There will be an opportunity to play instruments with the ensemble later in the workshop. If attendees want to be included in this, they need to bring their individual instrument and you would need to bring along a music stand as there will be simple notation provided for specific activities.  If the attendee plays rhythm section instrument [drums, piano, bass or guitar] they can sit in on the instruments, amps provided by us, but they will have to share with other attendees as we only will have one piano, drum kit and amp available!

There will also be opportunities throughout the workshop for any questions attendees may have. We would encourage any questions from attendees throughout on individual instruments on stage, approach to practicing or anything else music related.

Although there isn’t a required minimum age for this workshop if attendees wanted to play it would be best suited to young musicians starting at grade 2 level [ classical or jazz] and / or the ability to learn and play a Concert F minor pentatonic scale relatively well. D minor pent for alto/

G minor pent for Bb instruments. Perhaps if they are currently having music lessons now.

Any questions about this workshop, please feel free to get in touch with Craig or Ed beforehand.

craigcrofton007@gmail.com

edwardleaker@yahoo.co.uk