This month I’m joined by Prof Simon Purcell, one of the UK’s leading and most highly respected jazz educators. Combining a career as performer and educator, Simon Purcell was recently appointed International Chair in Improvisation at the Guildhall School of Music in London. 

Simon has taught and mentored several generations of Britain’s finest jazz musicians. Between 1987 and 2005, he was professor of jazz piano and improvisation at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, then in 2005 he was appointed Head of Jazz at Trinity College of Music, meanwhile, co-directing the Glamorgan Jazz Summer School (formerly the Barry Summer School). In between times he has acted as a consultant to Birmingham Conservatoire, been educational director of the National Jazz Youth jazz Orchestra of Scotland and also received the award for UK Jazz Educationalist of the Year from the Parliamentary Jazz Committee.

Since the mid 1980s, Simon has performed on piano both as leader and sideman, appearing with amongst others – Red Rodney, Kenny Wheeler, Eddie Henderson, Stan Sulzman, Jean Toussaint and Julian Arguelles. His current band “Red Circle” features Julian Siegel, Chris Batchelor, Steve Watts and Gene Calderazzo.

Over the years Simon has accumulated a mass of materials and informal research as a result of reflection, systematic recording, planning and evaluation of lessons, consequently forming a number of templates for diagnosis and interpretation of educational phenomena. Simon’s educational research has been published in several papers, including; Staff Development through Creative Co-Mentoring Partnerships, Musical Patchwork: Teacher Research Within a Conservatoire, and Teacher Research Within a Conservatoire – a condensed version of the former, published by Ashgate.

For this upcoming Learn 2 Play Jazz workshop he’ll be showing us how using the right mindset and process can transform your regular practice routine from something that can feel like a chore, into something that is fun and restorative!

So this is going to be an extremely helpful session, whatever your instrument!