By Miss Goodsell, Director of Music

The Jazz Band and Symphony Orchestra enjoyed taking part in a Jazz workshop on May 16th. Led by Matt Anderson, jazz teacher at Junior Royal Academy of Music, the students improved their improvisational skills, learning about modal improvisation using the dorian scale and how a jazz composition would be structured and performed. 

The jazz band, who work with Miss Dunne on a weekly basis, showed themselves to be confident, taking call and response improvisations, adding vibrato and enjoying themselves in style. For the Symphony Orchestra, working without music was a totally new experience. The group split into three so all could practise their improvisational skills and then a few confident players improvised as part of the main performance of ‘Milestones’ by Miles Davis in the concert. 

Well done to all those who took part!