NYJO Ambassadors Resource Pack

St Pauls Way Trust School/Drapers Academy KS3 Resource Pack

National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NYJO)

The National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NYJO) is the longest running organisation for young people playing big band jazz, running for just over 50 years. Before NYJO existed, there wasn’t much around for young people wanting to play jazz. You couldn’t study jazz in school or university and there certainly weren’t any workshops happening like the one you’re in now! Now, with NYJO, young musicians can gain experience performing live at some of the most famous jazz venues across the UK and around the world. We select some of the best young musicians in the country to be part of the band and these members go on to have a pretty good track record. Some of the most famous musicians of our time have come through NYJO: Amy Winehouse started off as a vocalist in NYJO and almost all of the band on the BBC show ‘Strictly come Dancing’ have been NYJO members! Today you’ll be hearing the NYJO Ambassadors play. They’re a small group of members in the main band who enjoy working with young people and helping them develop their musical skills. As young musicians themselves, they have a very clear idea of everything it takes to continue developing on their instrument and become established professional musicians. However, we’ve made sure you’re not missing out hearing the full main band and we’ve put a few videos of them in action on the playlist. You can find them on page 16. Our mission at NYJO is to make sure everyone gets the chance to learn about jazz and develop their performance skills. It doesn’t matter if you’re still learning on your instrument – the great thing about jazz is that you are in charge of the music!

Contents

1 About the Repertoire 2 Meet the Band 3 Activities 4 Jazz Glossary 5 Jazz Playlist 6 Get Involved

1) About the Repertoire

Take the A Train

Take the A Train is a composition by Billy Strayhorn, written in 1939 for the Duke Ellington Orchestra. The title refers to the new (in 1939) “A Train” subway line. Ellington had recently asked Strayhorn to work for him and the first line of the directions he gave to Strayhorn was “Take the A Train”. The melody is in AABA form which is a classic jazz format, like a mini sonata form. The B section is known as the middle eight or bridge and this terminology can be found in all the pop music that grew from jazz (which was the pop music of its time), e.g. James Brown’s famous remark “Can I take it to the bridge? Hit me now!”

All Blues

All Blues was written by trumpeter Miles Davis for his album Kind of Blue (1959). It uses a 12 bar blues chord sequence but with variations in the chord sequence and with a groove based on 6 beats in the bar. The alterations to the chord sequence are in the spirit of the modal jazz found on the rest of the album which was revolutionary at the time but is now a standard part of a modern jazz musician’s approach to composition and improvisation. Modal jazz (so called because it uses modes which are mainly the sounds generated by starting major scales on other notes other than the normal root note or tonic) uses these sounds often to provide a more subtle and impressionistic energy in the music compared to the vibrant harmony found in earlier jazz styles like bebop.

Cantaloupe Island

Cantaloupe Island was written by pianist Herbie Hancock for his 1964 album Empyrean Isles. The groove here is a ‘straight eights’ groove: as Rock and Roll grew out of jazz and took a different direction, moving from the shuffle feel of tunes like Rock Around the Clock to a more contemporary rock style, this was often used by jazz musicians as a different flavor for the rhythm section compared to swing. This tune is also modal but with a funky and bluesy sound that gives it a different feeling to All Blues.

Ballad Medley

Ballads are another favourite style for jazz musicians, particularly brass and saxophone players where we get to show our more sensitive side and play a beautiful melody. These are often a jazz standard from the period c1920-c1950 where a pop song has the words removed and is performed instrumentally. The advantage for the player is that, on the one hand, they get to play a tune with a great contour and some interesting harmony, but on the other hand the tune is familiar to the audience which helps them understand how the musician is using the material as the basis for improvisation.

Rhythm Changes

Rhythm Changes refers to the chord sequence (changes) for the famous jazz standard I Got Rhythm by George Gershwin. Stripping away the tune leaves a well-balanced and challenging chord sequence that jazz musicians love to improvise over. It follows the AABA form of Take the A Train. Many jazz musicians and others use this chord sequence as the basis for new melodies and we hope you recognize a few of these as we play, including Anthropology, Oleo, Lester Leaps In and The Flinstones….!

NYJO at Saffron Hall 2016

2) Meet the Band Chris Valentine Trombone

How did you come to join NYJO? I joined back in July 2006. I started off going to NYJO’s Saturday Academy and it went from there.

What’s your background as a player – how did you get into music? I was brought up in an entirely non-musical family. I did National Children’s orchestra playing the trombone but I didn’t have any kind of jazz education until I ended up at Trinity Laban. Before that I had maybe 3 or 4 improvising lessons in total. Most of the time, it was me just sat in my room just trying to figure out how to play things.

Did you always want to be a trombonist? Yes!

Why – What is it about the trombone that led you to pick it above all other instruments? I was really inspired by my teachers. I had a really fantastic teacher who was an orchestral trombonist playing in the BBC Concert Orchestra and he would tell me all these stories Really silly stories as well – ones that make you go ‘Wow! I can’t believe someone got fired for really doing that!’

Who are some of your musical influences? That’s a really tricky one I used to listen to loads of NYJO records when I was 12 or 13 – seriously, I love it! And then I would find out who was on those records so people like Mark Nightingale, Elliot Mason, and Guy Barker and then it was a case of finding out who they were checking out, such as trombonists JJ Johnson and Carl Fontana.

Do you have any musical heroes? My all-time idol is probably Frank Sinatra. But then I could also include Nelson Riddle and Count Basie, Thad Jones and Mel Lewis all in that same category. I’ve got a real love for big bands

Why did you get into jazz above other style of music? It just appealed to me a lot more. There’s a lot more to do on the trombone than if your sat in an orchestra. I got into jazz through playing in my school big band at first.

What styles of music do you listen to outside of your playing? I listen to a lot of big band stuff. There’s some pop artists I really like too - Bruno Mars, Justin Timberlake. I’ve worked with a few pop acts as well. I played for Tinchy Stryder and Tinie Tempah.

What advice would you give to a young musician just starting out on the trombone like you? Practice the basics – the fundamentals of playing the instrument. The main thing is don’t try and run before you walk.

What’s your best memory of being in NYJO so far? I always really like the gig we did for the Queen’s Jubilee. The London Jazz Festival gigs are always fun. But the BBC Proms are probably my favourite.

Alex Liebeck Bassist

How did you first begin playing music? I’ve been playing since a young age, starting off on the piano around age 5. I got into jazz as my grandad had a few albums that I liked and because of that started playing the double bass.

Why did you get into jazz above other style of music? I found that the levels of rhythm and harmony are really amazing in jazz. The sound really appealed to me more than other styles and I just found the energy of it great.

Did you always want to be a bassist? Well, I was always into piano which I still play. I’m just into music in general but I feel like the bass suits me as an instrument.

Is the bass the best instrument?

Course it is! It’s where the passion and soul is!

What styles of music do you listen to outside of your playing? I’m really into Cuban music and a lot of funk and soul. I also enjoy classical and world music - It’s good to keep it varied!

What techniques do you have to combat nerves when you’re performing? I like feeling nervous. For me, if you’re not feeling nervous, that the point where something doesn’t feel quite right. You want to feel that bubbling feeling inside because your about to do something exciting and creative!

What do you do if you’re playing live and something goes wrong? Has this ever happened to you? Don’t stop playing! First thing you’ve got to do is listen more. Most importantly, don’t beat yourself up about it. In fact turn it into music!

What’s your favourite memory being in NYJO so far? It has to be a member of the NYJO Jazz Messengers on the Isle of Wight tour where we went round to different schools introducing young students to the genre of jazz. I really love community engagement projects, it keeps me grounded in the music.

How would you say NYJO has helped your musicianship? Just playing with new music with great musicians always improves your playing. Also it been incredible for my reading skills.

What is the one piece of advice you’d give to a young person just starting out on an instrument? Definitely have as much fun with it and connect with it as there’s going to be a lot of times when you have to do the ‘dirty work’ so you’ve got to really enjoy it.

3) Activities

1. Listening

There are so many great resources for listening to jazz on the internet now: YouTube, Spotify etc. enable you to access music so much more easily than used to be the case. However, it is a great idea to listen to music together, not in isolation, and try to think about whether you like it and why. One great way into this is to divide music into its basic elements and focus on these in your listening. There are many different ways to describe musical elements but here is one that works particularly well for jazz:

Rhythm All the elements to do with how the music happens in time. Music (unlike painting or sculpture) is an art form in the 4th dimension – time! Where the music happens is particularly important in jazz. Some elements to listen out for are:

• Pulse – which instruments are playing this? Is it obvious or hidden? • Metre – how many beats in a bar? • Groove – the way the instruments work together to create a feeling of energy that you might want to dance to • Feel – the kind of groove being played – is it swing, straight eights, ballad, latin, funk? • Syncopation – the way the rhythmic patterns falls over and in between the beats which can create lots of excitement and colour in the music.

Pitch

Pitch can mean the melodic contour of the music. In jazz, we hear this in the head (the melody) and also in the improvised solos. Pitch and rhythm are the fundamentals that define the direction of the music up and down and also where the music occurs as time passes.

Harmony

If we think of pitch and rhythm as defining a line for the melody that moves forward and up/down, harmony is the colour of the line or the background colour around it. In jazz knowledge of the chord sequence allows musicians to improvise fluently over the melody, effectively replacing it with their own new instant composition. Harmony also works with rhythm in a subtle way to create a sense of arrival or tension/release in the music (cadence) and define the overall home base (the key).

Form

In jazz there are a variety of ways of structuring the music into logical blocks. Often there is a chorus – this is the repeating chord sequence of the melody that is being used as a basis for improvisation. The chorus itself might have a set form e.g. AABA (which would be eight bars for each section) and the whole performance might work as a ‘jazz sandwich’ i.e. a piece of bread for the ‘head’ at the start and finish with a

8 filling of solos based on the same chord sequence repeated many times, with some variations.

Texture

This can refer to a variety of different things. Whether the music is loud, quiet, high, low, thin, thick etc. all fall into this category, as do more subtle elements like whether there is a melody and an accompaniment or maybe a conversation between melodies in the music (counterpoint). Of particular note is the idea that jazz instruments often use a tone that has been embellished from the original with effects like vibrato, scoops, ghost notes and falls. All of these elements form a vocabulary of jazz sound that has its origin from imitating blues singing. This comes ultimately from African musical traditions of adding vocal effects to a pure sung tone or attaching necklaces of shells or bottle tops to the drum to customise the sound.

Here are some exercises to help focus your attention on some of these elements. To be a good jazz musician you need to notice all of these and internalise how they work to enable you to improvise and play in the style!

2. Playing/Singing

Doodling/Chicken

This exercise helps you to understand the difference between swing feel (like in Take the A Train) and straight feel (as in Cantaloupe Island). In the first you tap the heel of your foot on the beat, clap, tap or click on beats 2 and 4 and vocalise the three syllables “doo-dul-AH”. The accent on the “AH” is important as this gives the right emphasis to the off-beat note in a swing rhythmic pattern. For the second you vocalise “Chi-KA” which divides the beat into 2 but retains the off-beat accent.

Blues and Improvisation

Once you have begun to internalise the groove you can apply this to a 12-bar blues. Here is an example that you can use:

The “lyrics” are a form of rhythmic vocalisation known as “scat” that was invented to allow singers to improvise rhythmically in the same way as instrumentalists – so this tune is suitable for singing and playing. As mentioned above there is a strong connection between jazz instrumental and vocal style – listen to Louis Armstrong’s amazing trumpet and vocal solos on Hotter than That as a great example of this. The scat helps you to get the right accents and rhythmic energy into the groove.

To begin to improvise on this, keep the focus on the rhythm. Use the four notes of the melody and make up your own two bar phrase (eight beats long). You can play or sing these one after the other either around a group as the accompaniment repeats underneath. This creates a feeling of conversation and you can use the shape of the previous phrase to help you make up the next one. To extend your own solo improvisation think in the same way, but have a conversation with yourself, keeping to a two bar phrase structure. For now don’t worry about how the notes fit with the harmony – they all work in the melody so they will be good for the solo too. Eventually you may find you can keep going for a whole “chorus” (i.e. the whole of the 12 bar blues sequence) or more. Remember though that the key to authentic jazz soloing is to make rhythmic placement the most important element. Make your rhythms punchy, with a balance of space, on-beat and off-beat notes.

NYJO at Ronnie Scott’s in 2016 *photo taken by Carl Hyde

4) Jazz Glossary

BeBop – A famous style of jazz that emerged in the 1940’s led by Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker. The style features lots of fast passages and complex musical language.

Blues Scale - One common sound in jazz is the use of the blues scale in the music. Often you describe major scales as sounding happy and minor scales as sounding sad. The blues scale is neither happy or sad – it’s a bit of both. This is caused by extra notes in the tune added to the basic chord sounds - the blue notes create extra spice in the flavour of the music. A good example of the blues scale is ‘Blue Skies’ on the playlist.

Call & Response - A musical element often found in jazz and blues, that has developed from its African roots, is call & response. This is simply a musical conversation.

Chord Sequence – A chord sequence, or progression, is a series of chords that define the harmony of a tune. Jazz musicians use it as the basis for their improvisation.

Form – The word form is used to describe the structure of a piece. In classical music you might have Sonata or Theme and Variations. In jazz common forms include 32-bar (AABA) and 12-bar blues.

Head – In jazz the head refers to the tune/melody that the band play at the beginning of a tune. The band leader will often tap the top of their head to signal to the band to play the tune again at the end of the piece.

Improvisation - Improvisation simply means making it up! In most styles of jazz, musicians use the ‘map’ of the chord sequence and the melody as inspiration

Metre - The underlying regular heartbeat of the music

Modes - Modes are scales generated from different degrees of the major scale. For example, starting a C Major scale on a D creates a dorian mode. These sounds are used as the basis of modal jazz for improvising which evokes different colours and atmospheres.

Rhythm Section - The foundation of the swing feel is the Rhythm Section: the piano, bass, drum kit and guitar who when they’re working together well as a team make the music ‘groove’.

Riff - Sections of the band often play as a unit creating punchy musical phrases we call riffs. The layers of riff in each section create more syncopation and energy that encourages people to dance

Straight-Eights – This is a different groove to swing and means that the quavers are even across the bar.

Swing - Swing is a rhythmic style that has African origins and is designed to be danced to. The quavers swing and there is emphasis on beats 2 & 4. There is a practical exercise to help you swing on page 10

Syncopation - All of the rhythms in the music are based around combinations on on-the-beat and off-the-beat rhythms. The combinations of these are what make the rhythm energetic and exciting. This is called syncopation.

Walking Bass – Walking bass is where the bassist plays on every beat of the bar to outline the chord sequence and is commonly used in jazz. Listen to Honeysuckle Rose on the playlist for a great example of walking bass.

5) Jazz Playlist If you liked the music played today, check out our Youtube Playlist, for some more inspiration. Click on the song titles to view the tunes!

1) Louis Prima – Sing, Sing, Sing

2) Frank Sinatra – I’ve got you under my skin

3) Herbie Hancock – Cantaloupe Island

4) Sarah Vaughan – I Got Rhythm

5) Jake Labazzi – Anthropology Jake is a NYJO member. Here he is playing a rhythm changes tune on TV at the BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year competition

6) Duke Ellington – C Jam Blues This is a very simple tune, it only uses two notes (C & G), but really swings! Try playing/singing along

7) Duke Ellington – Take the ‘A’ Train

8) Miles Davis – Pan Piper from Sketches of Spain This tune is classic modal jazz and is supposed to conjure up image of Spain

9) Ella Fitzgerald – Blue Skies Listen out for how Ella uses blue notes in her scat solo

10) Cecile McLorin Salvant – I didn’t know what time it was

11) Anita O-Day – Honeysuckle Rose This is a prime example of a walking bassline – swingin’!

12) Esperanza Spalding – Sunny Side of the Street Esperanza plays double bass and sings at the same time! Here she plays her brand new version of a very old jazz standard. Look out for some famous faces in the audience.

13) Irakere – Juana 1600 This is a latin jazz tune with loads of percussion that helps the piece groove.

14) Fania All-stars – El Raton This is another latin jazz tune. Listen out for the guitar solo. 15) Herbie Hancock – Watermelon Man This is a really funky tune! It has lots of simple riffs on top of each other which makes it groove. How do you think the sounds at the beginning are made? 15

You might also like to hear more of NYJO:

1) Feelin’ Good – this is a classic tune, made famous by Nina Simone, but sung here by Emma Smith

2) Rockin’ in Rhythm – NYJO played this classic Duke Ellington tune at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall

3) MBadgers – a funky tune that was written for NYJO by Julian Siegel and played on our latest album, NYJO Fifty.

4) That Old Black Magic – this is a swinging tune featuring our vocalist at the time, Jessica Radcliffe. She’s now the vocal tutor at our NYJO Academy on Saturdays.

Obviously, this is just a small sample of the huge world of jazz music that is out there! We hope you enjoy the music and are inspired to explore more jazz on your own.

NYJO member Tom Ridout with a Sousaphone!

*Photo taken by Carl Hyde

6) Get Involved

Did you enjoy today’s concert and would like to learn how to get involved in jazz yourself? Read on to find out how you can find music opportunities in Tower Hamlets and beyond.

Where to find out about music lessons? Often a good place to start is with your school, who might have visiting music teachers coming in to teach various instruments. Have a word with your teacher and they’ll be able to point you in the right direction. Most in-school teachers in the borough are organised by Tower Hamlets Arts & Music Education Service (THAMES). You can get in touch with THAMES on 020 7365 0431 or [email protected] to find out about having instrumental lessons. Lessons through the music hub are often subsidised and many schools locally have bursaries available to ensure committed students can benefit from music lessons. There are also many options out there if you would like to find a private teacher. Teachers often advertise locally, so check the notice boards in your local music shop. Musicteachers.co.uk also has a searchable database of teachers.

Taking Jazz further Living in London means you’re very lucky as there are lots of opportunities for getting involved in playing jazz. Here are a few options:

THAMES Saturday & Wednesday Music Centres - webfronter.com/towerhamlets/thames/menu3/welcome_3.1.html Julian Joseph Jazz Academy (held at Bridge Academy) – www.hdmt.org./saturdayprog/jjja Barbican Young Jazz Big Band - https://www.barbican.org.uk/take-part/young- creatives/young-jazz-big-band

Joining NYJO As you’ve seen in the concert, NYJO includes some of the best young jazz musicians in the country – and especially since the upper age limit is 25 it might seem like you’re miles away from being able to join NYJO. But that’s not the case. NYJO runs a weekly NYJO Academy on Saturdays at Morpeth School that anyone from around the country can take part in. Currently we have members coming from Birmingham, Leeds and Hull – so it really isn’t that far for you! The NYJO Academy is open to all young musicians from the age of 9 – 19 and there are a variety of ensembles to get involved in. Some of these are auditioned but most are open access. If you’re interested, please have a look at www.nyjo.org.uk to find out more. And don’t be put off by the costs, there are bursaries available for those that need them.

Taking Exams Once you’re learning an instrument, there are all sorts of exams you can take to mark your progress. The ABRSM have a specially designed series of jazz exams – which measure your progress on all the key elements of jazz. There are tunes to get stuck in to (lots of standards and pieces specially written for the ABRSM by leading jazz composers) and all the usual parts you’d expect in a music exam, but with a jazz twist. Currently these exams are available for flute, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, piano and ensembles at grades 1-5. Grade 5 jazz can also be used instead of Grade 5 theory if you’re looking to progress to the higher classical grades. To find out more, speak to your music teacher or visit www.abrsm.org/jazz