Excit­ing news for any­one try­ing to estab­lish or inspire their jazz pro­grams without blow­ing their yearly budget. Jazzworx! is offer­ing to provide a free per­form­ance or work­shop with their fac­ulty ensemble, Unit 7.

UNIT 7 The Jazzworx! Fac­ulty Ensemble

Unit 7 is made up of some of Brisbane’s lead­ing jazz musi­cians and edu­cat­ors with a proven record of excel­lent com­mu­nic­a­tion skills in jazz education.

Dan Quigley–Trumpet
Graeme Norris–Woodwinds
Melissa Forbes–Vocals
Paula Girva–Piano
Bruce Woodward–Guitar
Helen Russel–Bass
Dave Sanders–Drums

Here’s what Craig Scott, Chair of Jazz Stud­ies at the Sydney Con­ser­vat­orium of Music, wrote in his report on Jazzworx! Music Institute’s Bach­elor of Music in Jazz Performance.

“Firstly, I would like to say that I was very impressed with what I saw.

The over­arch­ing prin­cipal that drives good jazz edu­ca­tional prac­tice in my view is an under­stand­ing of the key place that the his­tory of jazz per­form­ance takes in inform­ing cur­rent practice.

Too often stu­dents are dis­in­clined to listen to older styles of music because they are not “cut­ting edge” or “mod­ern”. I was thrilled to hear the stu­dents play­ing using the jazz lan­guage that forms the basis of the whole tra­di­tion of jazz extem­por­isa­tion, and demon­strat­ing that they under­stood not only the mech­an­ics of how to apply it, but also the neces­sity of its applic­a­tion in order to sound like jazz players.

In my opin­ion this is in no small part due to the expert­ise of the staff that pop­u­late your faculty.

I was impressed with the excel­lence of their musi­cian­ship, and their pro­fes­sional demean­our in deal­ing with the stu­dents in class. I felt that there was a hol­istic approach to the con­cert prac­tice I atten­ded which was refresh­ing; it facil­it­ated cand­our in apply­ing con­struct­ive feed­back, but always on a pos­it­ive note. It is appar­ent that there is still a memory of what it is like to be start­ing out on the road to learn­ing that informs the teach­ing prac­tices at Jazzworx, and this col­lect­ive insight is essen­tial to good teach­ing, in my view.”

For fur­ther inform­a­tion, con­tact Dan Quigley on 3216 1110 or via email dan@jazz.qld.edu.au