The project focuses on a specific area of higher music education within the jazz genre, larger jazz ensembles. At the same time, it aims at establishing better links between jazz education and working life. Ensemble training is increasingly seen as an important pedagogical tool for the training of transversal skills vital for the musician in the 21st century: team working, peer-learning and reflective practice are essential principles, which will support musicians to prepare themselves to be reflective practitioners in their future portfolio careers. It is an important objective to explore the didactic possibilities of working with large ensembles in an educational context in jazz performance study programmes, just as different formats of large ensembles play a very important role in music education within the classical music genre. At the same time, it is important to revitalize the large jazz ensemble format by challenging the traditional big band format. The financial challenges classical and jazz ensembles and institutions are facing creates a window of opportunity for innovation when it comes to the music itself as well as the relationship between the various stakeholders and the audience. The project will lay the groundwork for the provision of a sustainable platform for mobility an learning that doesn’t exist today . The project will also develop study programmes for conductors for large ensembles within the jazz genre. This is relevant both for dedicated jazz ensembles and for the many classical ensembles (eg symphony orchestras) that let different forms of "rhythmic repertoire" become an increasingly larger part of their activities. As far as the involved project partners know, there is no conductor education aimed at this type of repertoire anywhere in the world. The objectives of the project is to: - Establish sustainable collaboration between the partners in the areas developed through the project - Explore new didactic opportunities and methodologies through work with large jazz ensembles in the education of future jazz musicians - Explore and establish relevant blended learning methods for future collaboration between the partners - Develop closer collaboration between jazz education and the labour market, represented by important jazz festivals, in order to improve working life relevance of the education and the students' entrepreneurial skills. - Develop new repertoire for large jazz ensembles - Contribute to the revitalization of the role large jazz ensembles have on the professional music and art scene - Develop and launch specialized conductor education aimed at jazz and other rhythmic genres. During the project the following number of persons will be directly involved: - 100 jazz performance students involved in Intensive Programmes - 10 conductor students Intensive Programmes - 5 teachers from higher music education and 5 managers/producers from jazz festivals in Working Group 1. - 5 teachers from higher music education in Working group 2 - 10 leaders/managers from higher music education institutions and jazz festivals in the steering group - Administrative and support staff in all partner institutions. The objectives of the project will be achieved through a combination of several activities, two working groups that will work with specific topics and several intensive programmes for students and teachers, exploring and developing new methodologies and new music for large jazz ensembles. The results of the project will be presented on the project's web site and in a conference at the end of the project. The musical result will also be presented by student ensembles participating in the project at five concerts at five different European jazz festivals. The consortium behind the project believes the project has the potential to lead to significant development of methods and content in jazz education at all educational levels in the partner institutions and in other higher music education institutions
We wanted to share knowledge between the institutions, establish cooperation with various festivals and together • Develop new methodology for how to create music for large ensembles where improvisation is an important element • Develop new methodology for teaching in the field • Create good arenas for cooperation with the professional music scene by establishing contacts with important jazz festivals in the various countries • Start a joint effort to develop education in ensemble management for large jazz ensembles • Investigate different ways of using blended learning in connection with the points above
For several years, the Norwegian Academy of Music has had a strong professional environment in the area of large jazz ensembles. We have international capacities amongst our staff, and we cooperate well with several foreign institutions. Although there are many large jazz ensembles (both professional and student-based) in Europe, there is little access to systematized knowledge beyond what can be taken from the big band tradition from the USA, with roots going back to the 1920s-30s. We felt that there was a need to exchange ideas and map out best practices among European actors with a slightly different artistic point of view than the one in the USA. This could be useful both for educators and professional performers. At the same time, we saw that there is a need to find good strategies to collaborate with the professional music scene - running large ensembles requires resources, through collaboration you can get more things done than what one festival or HMEI can achieve on its own. We also saw that many unexplored opportunities in blended learning could make collaboration more efficient and environmentally friendly.