"Buster explains jazz theory really well and his enthusiasm is infectious. I always come away feeling I've learned a great deal and had a lot of fun in the process."
Matt Male - tenor saxophone and flute
Jazz Workshop 86
Sat 7 June 10:30am (UK)
How To Get The Most From Your Practice Time
This month I’m joined by 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 says…
“We spend a lot of time practising or at least wanting to practice and progress. In this session I hope to assist you in becoming more productive and addressing blocks and frustrations with constructive strategies. There will be some musical exercises we can do together.”
So this is going to be an extremely helpful session, whatever your instrument!
Everyone is muted in the class, so you are welcome to sing and play along as much as you like, or just tune in and observe. Either is fine. There will be a Q&A session at the end of the class.
The workshop lasts approx 1hr and starts at 10:30am
If you can’t make the live session a video recording of the class will be available in my lesson vault.
If you are not already a VIP member, you can get a free invitation to the class by signing up for a no-commitment 14-day FREE trial, which gives you access to everything on the site including over 80hrs of lessons and courses.
I hope to see you there!
Buster.
Sample clips from past Zoom classes...
