Masterclass with the Wayne Escoffery Band

On Tuesday this week we were fortunate to be able to welcome to the School Wayne Escoffery and his fabulous band to work with our pupils in an excellent masterclass.

For nearly two hours tenor saxophonist Wayne and his fellow musicians worked with our most advanced jazzers, playing for them, answering questions and then leading an improvising session.

Advice given centered around the importance of listening to as much jazz as possible and transcribing solos so that students could begin to develop a proper jazz vocabulary. Otherwise, as Wayne put it, improvising is like "baby talk" - you can make sounds but you're not really making any jazz sense.

Here is Wayne in action with his band:

And here he is playing with the amazing Mingus Big Band.