The transformative power of music
Music has a habit of drawing you in. It can set a mood, it can tell a story, and it can reveal a hidden truth. This great ability to transform is at the heart of all great music, whether a Bach prelude, a Motown classic or a Broadway ballad.
As a performer, this expressive power is in your hands. If you’ve ever played or sung a piece of music with friends or in front of an audience, you’ll know how exciting an experience this can be. You’ll also know that the mechanics—playing the right notes at the right time—will only take you so far.
A musical performance requires a collection of other skills that we say create ‘feeling’, or ‘musicality’. If you’ve ever witnessed a performance that seems effortless, you’ll have seen these skills at work.
A successful performer explores the music beyond the surface layer. They coax meaning and energy from the printed page, and they somehow convey that to their audience.
This freedom of expression can be elusive, though. Our own performance can seem perilous, uncertain, and nothing like the comfort zone we really need it to be.
Why Jazz?
Jazz is a genre with interpretation and expression at the very heart of the music. It is sometimes misunderstood to be music without rules. In fact, style, theory, structure and—above all—musicianship, go hand-in-hand with expression.
Video: In a Sentimental Mood by Ella Fitzgerald
Listen the very start of Ella Fitzgerald’s famous recording of ‘In a Sentimental Mood’, and you’ll hear a voice that is simultaneously fearless and fragile.
She manages to fill the void with a sound that sets the scene in the first few syllables. In the moments before the gentle guitar enters, we are already in that sentimental mood.
Clearly, she’s not thinking of the tempo, or the key, or the dynamic marking, or which beat of the bar she should come in on. In fact, all we hear is the tone and the moment.
Videos: So What by Miles Davis
Hear Miles Davis’ famous trumpet solo on ‘So What’. His brittle, tiny notes pierce the world, landing perfectly on the beat, and leaving craters a mile wide. He paints with a humble palette of pitches but builds an epic picture that is spectacular and awesome.
Video: Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five - Hotter Than That [1927]
Or listen to Louis Armstrong, in 1927, playing ‘Hotter than That’. The joyous exuberance of his horn seems to sing to us from another place and time. At once uncomplicated and sophisticated, the essence of this joy is impossible to pin down.
And that, frankly, is the point. Jazz lets us probe and experiment, to extend ourselves and engage fully with the act of performance without ever having to justify ourselves.
We can follow our heart.
We can paint OUR picture.
Jazz at City Lit
City Lit offers a range of jazz studies to suit a range of instruments and ambitions. Playing jazz will improve every area of your musical experience. You will improve your technical ability, your understanding of music theory in practice, and forge a connection with your own expression and the power of your performance.
Learning in a group has many benefits over one to one tuition, not least the ready audience that is the class. And learning to listen is our top priority as musicians.
Explore Jazz courses
Our jazz courses include saxophone, jazz guitar & piano, jazz singing, Big Band, drumming, jazz harmony & ear training, Township jazz, ensemble playing, “woodshedding”. Where might you fit in?
