Boston And Corfu - A Tale Of Two Jazz Schools

A couple of recent trips I’ve taken have shown the breadth of jazz education and how it can function in very different environments and on different scales, (no pun intended!). 

In the middle of October I went to the Berklee InternationalNetwork 20^th Anniversary meeting at the renowned Boston school. The BIN network is an international organization made up of schools from all around the world, all of whom collaborate with Berklee in a range of ways, from curriculum sharing to credit transfer. The school in which I work, Newpark Music Centre in Dublin, has been a member for almost 10 years, and like most of the schools in the organization, we operate on a tiny scale compared to Berklee. We have 120 full time students in our school, and Berklee has 4,400 – that gives you an idea of the disparities in the size of our respective organisations.

Berklee is a giant organisation, and one which is still growing, with a new campus opened two years ago in Valencia in Spain and a new building currently rising into the Boston skyline (pictured above on the left), as well as the numerous buildings they also occupy in that city. Its facilities are second to none, with state of the art studios and performance spaces, as well as the usual classrooms and practice facilities. Berklee's giant size and fame has generated hostility as well as admiration in jazz education circles, with a viewpoint sometimes being put forward that Berklee's size mitigates against a student there getting a true quality and artistic education there. This is both inaccurate and unfair. I never studied there, but I have been a guest teacher there, and of course at our school we have wide experience of dealing with Berklee on an ongoing basis, and the reality is that Berklee has teachers and courses that are every bit as good as the physical facilities they provide. I think it's true to say that in an institution the size of Berklee, it would be easy for a shy and retiring student to get lost, but that's probably true in any school. If you go to Berklee, and you have a good idea of what it is you want to do, you can get great teachers that will help you towards that goal, as well as the benefits of living in a large musical community with a huge amount of activity going on.

One thing Berklee has always been, is a weathervane for jazz education -  as far as the world of professional music making is concerned, it has generally got its finger on the pulse of the music industry and how it relates to musicians. So at this meeting of the various schools connected to Berklee, it was very interesting for me to see how many schools were diversifying away from traditional performance studies and into the worlds of music production, composing for Gaming, film scoring, and other non-performance related pursuits. Berklee themselves have been at the forefront of many of these developments and have also pioneered online learning.

(Representatives of the BIN schools, including yours truly, gather for the family photo)

And listening to my colleagues around the world speaking and talking about their schools and courses, it struck me that as the environment for performing musicians gets more economically challenging by the day, we're already seeing a reaction from the schools in moving away from teaching performance, and towards these other more financially sustainable areas. I can see a situation where in maybe only twenty years time, high level music performance students will be in the minority in non-classical schools, and these other areas will make up the bulk of a typical schools' activities. Demand and supply. After all, who is going to spend four years, (minimum), and a lot of money on learning an instrument, and then play for the door in their professional life?

I do believe that the profession of high level performing musician is completely under threat, and could go the way of the Blacksmith in being a job that was once common, but now only done by specialists...

But this is a whole other conversation, back to the subject matter. So, having attended this meeting with colleagues from all over the world, at the world's biggest music school, a few days later I was off to teach for a few days at the Ionian University on the small and beautiful Greek island of Corfu, and it wouldn't be possible to think of a greater contrast between these two educational events.

(The view from the cafeteria!)

Berklee is in Boston, one of America's largest cities, Corfu is small and extraordinarily picturesque. It is an island very popular with holiday makers, but in October, most of the tourists have gone and you get this end of season feeling from the half empty restaurants and shops - a bittersweet atmosphere that I remembered so well from my last visit there, which had also taken place at this time of the year. I've loved Greece from the first time I went there, and I've loved it more ever since, for so many reasons.

So when an opportunity arose to to go there and teach again, along with the great Dutch drummer Eric Ineke, I jumped at it, and a few days after returning from the hurly-burly of Berklee and downtown Boston,  found myself in the quietness and Mediterranean beauty of Corfu. And from being in an institution that had more than four thousand students, I found myself working with a student body of less than fifty.

I also found myself going from one of the world's richest countries, to one which has been buffeted by economic travails in recent years - a buffeting I know all too well since Ireland has also gone through similar economic ill fortune, and our people have also been immorally impoverished in order to keep rich people rich. Greece is having an even harder time than Ireland and has suffered the economic strictures of the IMF and EU in an even more brutal way than we have. So, apart from any other reason, I was very happy to go to Greece and talk to, and work with the students there, and to be able to remind them, and me, about what is really important and of true value to us all in these horrible days - music.

Eric Ineke

So having ensconced myself in my small hotel, I met Eric for dinner and as always with this great and experienced musician, the talk turned to music in general and jazz in particular and we had a particularly stimulating discussion about the evolution of the rhythm section as a unit in jazz, and who were the greatest exponents of the art of accompaniment. It's always a pleasure being with Eric and his knowledge and experience is in evidence whether you're talking with him or having the immense pleasure of playing with him. Eric has had an amazing career and soon I'll be publishing an interview with him here on this blog in which he talks about his life and career in music. Watch this space.

For several days Eric and I worked together with the students, covering as many different areas as we could in the short time we had - how to make your music feel good, rhythm section playing, a great overview of Elvin Jones' career and music given by Eric, how to improve your rhythmic technique, ensemble playing, and individual bass and drum lessons.

Students from the Ionian University jazz programme

It was a pleasure to work with the students, who were both talented and enthusiastic and the whole programme is a credit to the course leader Dimos Dimitriadis, who has fought heroically to keep jazz education going in 3rd Level education in Greece at a time of great economic difficulty. The musical highlight of the week for me was the gig Dimos, Eric and my old friend the great pianist George Kontrafouris, did when we played at a local arts club to a packed house, and just had so much fun swinging as hard as we could and playing for such a great audience.

Corfu itself is beautiful and my daily commute to work - a twenty minute walk along the seafront to the school - was a highlight in itself. To get an idea of the beauty and character of Corfu that I experienced while there, have a look here.

At the end of my time I was genuinely sorry to leave this beautiful island, these committed musicians and the wonderful people that I met there in everyday life. But this very intense two weeks of travelling between, and working within two very different jazz education institutions showed again the adaptability of the jazz education model, and how it can flourish in two very different environments, and on two very different scales. In both places I met people who love music, who care about it and want it to succeed and who put their talents and energies towards that end.

There are a lot of naysayers about jazz education, but the most charitable thing I can say about them is that they don't understand anything about jazz education and how it works. To see what I saw in two weeks, is to see something inspiring and hopeful, and indeed touching. Despite all the crap, music lives, creativity lives, jazz lives.

More Thoughts on Jazz Education, Art, Craft, and Entitlement

(Dave Liebman speaking to students and teachers at the IASJ Meeting in Graz)

Some recent thoughts on jazz education, prompted by attending the 2012 IASJ Meeting

I’ve spent the past week at the International Association of Schools of Jazz annual meeting in Graz in Austria. I’ve written before about what goes on at the IASJ meetings and what a buzz it is, and this year was no exception. Last year it was in Brazil, and this year in Austria so naturally the vibe of the location was quite different, but the camaraderie of the musicians – teachers and students alike – was as strong as ever. At a time when institutionalised jazz education as an idea is again under scrutiny, it was interesting and thought provoking to be part of this meeting and once again my feelings on the positive benefits of jazz education were both confirmed and reinforced.

I attended the meeting that saw the foundation of the IASJ  - an organization which was the idea of the Artistic Director Dave Liebman – in 1989, and have attended 20 of the 22 meetings so far. Being part of the IASJ was invaluable to our school in Dublin, which at the time of the foundation of the IASJ, was just beginning to take its first steps towards putting in place some fulltime jazz programmes, which culminated in us offering a BA in Jazz Performance, and a 2-year fulltime programme with transferring credits in Berklee College of Music in Boston. Being part of the IASJ and attending the meetings gave me an insight into what was involved in the setting up and running of a real jazz programme, the kind of subjects which should be covered, how the materials were most effectively taught, and the pedagogical philosophy underpinning the teaching of jazz. The meetings themselves, in which teachers and students from all over the world come together to play, hang, and discuss music, are fantastic giving everyone involved a great fillip and a chance to meet their colleagues from all over the world.

During the meeting there are regular meetings between teachers and school administrators that discuss pedagogical issues  and current issues related to the teaching of jazz in institutions. Usually these meetings catch the zeitgeist of current concerns among the jazz community as it relates to education, and this year was no exception.

 (Outdoor student concert in Graz)

Art, Craft and 'The Gig'

This year there was much discussion of the employability, or otherwise, of graduating students from jazz programmes. In the US in particular, the financial practicality of undertaking a jazz education in an institution is definitely an issue – how can someone who spends more than $100,000 on their education have any hope of making that back? The situation is somewhat different in Europe in that education is much cheaper so the ratio of education cost to possibilities of recouping that cost is more realistic. But it’s tough for jazz musicians in Europe as well and questions of how and what jazz schools should be teaching are both timely and apposite.

But despite agreeing with the principal of helping students to equip themselves with the tools to operate as professional musicians (music business courses, technology courses, entrepreneurship courses etc.) I feel we are in danger of losing sight of what it is that we (high level jazz schools) do best – teach the art and craft of playing improvised music. The economic situation being what is, jazz schools are under more threat than ever before from both market forces, and pressure, (from the school authorities themselves) to respond to market forces. The response to this has in my opinion, begun to become skewed in that I notice a trend to almost apologise for teaching jazz, and a trend towards viewing the business aspects of the programme as being the most valuable thing you can teach.  

But the reality is that many non-jazz schools offer music business and technology courses, and the vast majority of private music schools focus on the more commercial and business related aspects of music education.  For example, here in Dublin my school is the only one that offers full time jazz education and high level training in non-classical music performance. If we were to change our focus to offer separate courses in music business, music technology or writing for Gaming, then we’d immediately be in competition with at least 10 other schools in the Dublin area alone.

It’s the high level performance training that set jazz schools apart from all the other music schools. Only classical conservatoires offer similar high level performance training, and they are far more specialised than jazz schools, training musicians who are unsuited to almost any other form of musical employment other than classical.

 (Final student concert at the IASJ Meeting Graz)

I’m a firm believer in the teaching of craft despite the constant decrying of the amount of musicians being turned out by jazz schools. As far as the (incredibly inaccurate) received wisdom goes, jazz schools are anti-creativity and have a negative effect on the jazz scene. Bullshit. Jazz schools are, in my opinion, like Architecture schools – they teach a high level craft in a milieu which is also artistic. In architecture, most architects spend their professional lives designing functional buildings, some of which will be artistic, some less so. Occasionally brilliant architects will appear and their creations definitely occupy the artistic realm. But the architecture schools are not responsible for which of their students are more creative and artistic. All they can do  – is teach the craft of architecture, teach and show the history and work of great  architecture, and hopefully teach and inspire a new generation of great architects. But even if an architect only ends up designing a post office, they still need the craft level to make sure that the ceiling doesn’t come down on the head of a customer!

Similarly jazz schools should teach the craft of jazz (and related musics  as desired), introduce the students to the rich creative history of the music, encourage students towards creative goals and provide them with an environment in which they can fully benefit from both the knowledge and experience of the teachers and the creative energy of their fellow students.  A school that teaches high level craft, encourages creativity and supports a strong musical community is something to be proud of, not something to be slightly ashamed of just because some jazz critics, who don’t know their arse from their elbow, make brainless pronunciations on the negative impact of jazz schools.

 (Countryside outside Graz)

Anyone who attended the last IASJ meeting (or any jazz camp, workshop, summer school or similar) would attest to the happiness and excitement of the young musicians who attended, and could attest to the high level playing skills displayed by all of them. How could this joy in playing together and high achievement in performance be a bad thing? Some critics say that only the most talented and creative should be educated – but who is going to choose who has the benefit of an education and who doesn’t? The critics? Jesus, the day that happens we might as well all pack up and go home…………

Entitlement..........

Another thing that was discussed at this meeting, (mostly informally among the teachers), was the sense of entitlement among many students these days…… There definitely seems to be a trend towards the idea that a student deserves a high grade regardless of the effort put in. There’s no doubt that in this time of instant gratification the connection between effort and reward is less understood than ever before. In a field like jazz, where there are no shortcuts to high level achievement, there is no substitute for hard work, single-mindedness, and dedication. But more and more, we in the schools are starting to see a greater unwillingness among some students to put in the flying hours necessary to become an international standard jazz musician. Yet we are facing demands from these same students for high grades which they clearly haven’t earned. A sign of the times I think….. I hasten to add that not all students are like this, but there’s definitely a growing trend in this direction.

And the delusions of some of these students about how the music world works is not helped by the attitudes of some teachers and administrators whose indulgence of students, regardless of achievement, are bound to feed into the idea that you can be half-hearted about your commitment to the music and yet achieve a high standard of achievement. I heard one administrator recently, (at a different meeting to the IASJ), say that our job was to ‘get out of the way of the students’. Really? If a student really wants teachers out of his or her way, then surely the best way would be not to come to the school in the first place? If a student comes to a school, they should be there for the following reasons:

1 To be in a community of musicians

2 To take part fully in the musical life of that community

3 To take all they can from the experience and knowledge of the school’s teachers

The school’s job is:

1 To provide a place where this community of musicians can flourish

2 To provide an environment where creativity, craft and high achievement is valued among both students and teachers

3 To give the students the benefit of the experience and knowledge of the teachers

I didn’t come through the jazz school system myself, yet I am completely a believer in the value of these schools. Of course they’re not perfect – in the same way that democracy has its flaws but is the best system we’ve got. The community of musicians around which musicians learnt their craft in previous times, doesn’t really exist any more. Until or unless something better comes along, the best way to get the information you need as an aspiring young jazz musician is to go to a good school and partake of the life there -  for a while at least.

Here's an example of what great things young musicians can do when given the kind of opportunities attending a jazz school can bring. This is a student concert from last year's IASJ meeting in Sao Paulo

Barry Donohue's 'Anti-Matter' at the IASJ... by NewparkMusic