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On Thursday 12 February, the winners of the 2026 national Music and Drama Education Awards were announced at a gala dinner and awards ceremony at the De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms in Central London. Shortlisted as a finalist for the “Outstanding Music Education Resource” award was Learn 2 Play Jazz, a website created by renowned jazz educator Buster Birch, which grew out of his lockdown Zoom jazz workshops and now includes over 100 hours of premium video lessons and courses for all instruments and experience levels.
The other nominees for this category include Rockschool, The ISM, Collins Music Publishers and The Music Teachers Association, who are some of the industry’s largest and most well-established institutions.
Buster said "I'm thrilled to be nominated alongside such prestigious institutions and am very proud of how Learn 2 Play Jazz has grown over the last year. We now have a comprehensive program of study that can be tailored to fit almost any instrument at any level, supplementing the student's study of the classic jazz repertoire with essential musicianship training. The 14-day free trial unlocks everything, which means anyone can try it out with no obligation".
Well, unfortunately, but not surprisingly, we didn't win the award. But I was very proud to be listed alongside such prestigious and well-established international music education corporations. As well as big music industry providers, the awards celebrate a lot of the good work going on in school and college music and drama departments across the nation. I had a nice time at the awards ceremony and was impressed with all the hard work that is happening to promote the performing arts, often by individuals going above and beyond to fight against the general decline. I was also pleased to be flying the flag for jazz, because the only time that word was mentioned all night was when they read out our nomination. Congratulations to Patrick Johns for winning the award for six years of his music education podcast "Teaching Notes", covering all things music education in the classroom. Well deserved sir! I was fortunate to be a guest on his podcast episode 122, which is available on Spotify and all podcast platforms.