NYJO January residency is this week's prize. Plus NYJO at Leeds Educators' Conference

Start the year with NYJO at Ronnie's. This week's PRIZE DRAW for newsletter readers is a pair of tickets for the second night of the three-day NYJO residency at Ronnie Scott's, Tuesday January 3rd.

For this residency NYJO have commissioned two brand new pieces from Julian Joseph which will be premiered. Two of the new pieces NYJO premiered last year : Nikki Iles' "Hush", and Tim Garland's "Dawn before Dark before Dawn" are also on the programme. NYJO tells me it is taking "another step towards broadening our artistic scope and forging bonds with leading musicians and composers on the UK and International scenes".

And here's more proof of NYJO's other push, to integrate more effectively into the jazz education community:  NYJO will  be doing a workshop and performing the closing concert of the Leeds International Jazz Educators Conference on Friday 30 March 2012.

Newsletter subscribers please email me to put your names in the hat.

For details of the Leeds conference including the call for papers follow this link

Our previous NYJO post was about the new AUDITION PROCESS
nyjo.org.uk/ Ronnie Scott's

New audition process at NYJO

There are  more signs of change all the time, a move to greater transparency and openness at NYJO. It is  catching up fast with the times, listening to, and responding to the recommendations of a wide range of jazz educators.  Latest to change is the audition process. Rather than having to demonstrate their abilities in open rehearsals, NYJO is moving to a proper selection process.

A FULL EXPLANATION OF TH E BACKGROUND IS ON NYJO'S WEBSITE. 
 The first part of the process for applicants is to send in a video.  The final auditions in Leeds on 3rd December and in London on 7th January.


Mark Armstrong: “Change is necessary. Previously NYJO was often seen as a great finishing school for session musicians and a lot of our material focussed on sight-reading. Now the professional climate has changed, and much of this work has gone. While all the vital skills of reading, being a team player, composing and arranging, guiding less experienced players, etc. still need to addressed, many of our musicians now want a more jazz-oriented experience. A deeper engagement with groove and creative improvisation in the widest range of musical styles will help build tomorrow’s community of active jazz musicians. To achieve this we need a performing squad of the best 30-35 young jazz players, regardless of where they are and whatever their background.

NYJO, NYJO 2 and NYJO London will still be offering open rehearsals every week and it remains the case that anyone who wants can find a place in the NYJO learning structure: one of the aims is to make the great readers more creative and musically sensitive, and help the creative, sensitive players get better reading chops! But the performing band will be selected, and it’s likely the very best UK jazz players will have considerable ability on both sides of the coin.”

Nigel Tully: “It has taken two years of hard graft to get all of this established. It will probably take a year or two more to make a difference. Youth jazz educators will get up to speed and make it happen for their musicians. Groups that feel they have been under-represented now have a transparent process on which to focus. And if musicians want to be the best of the best, then we have provided a big band route.”

For anyone interested in auditioning, Sean Corby, ex Tomorrow’s Warriors and Roundhouse, is the man to talk to : Here's his email address .

News from NYJO and Conservatoires UK

NYJO is changing and becoming much more aligned and integrated into the national jazz education scene. A lengthy press release, which we reproduce in full, has a number of major steps forward:

- Conservatoires UK (eight conservatoires, a body with one notable absentee - the Royal Academy of Music) has signed a collaboration agreement with NYJO

- The conservatoires will work closely with NYJO, recognize membership of NYJO as being "the best of the best" and give credits within courses for the activity

- From January 2012, NYJO will be changing its selection processes with an aim to far greater transparency

- The Arts Council which started the process, insisting that NYJO change and integrate, hasn't spoken but should (surely) approve (?)
Here's the full text of the PRESS RELEASE

Conservatoires UK and the National Youth Jazz Orchestra Combine for Unique Collaboration

Conservatoires UK and the National Youth Jazz Orchestra have signed an historic agreement that will allow students from the eight member conservatoires to gain professional experience and artistic excellence at national level.

Marking this special relationship, both organisations have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which will see the development and fostering of relations, creating a lasting cultural legacy in the education of young jazz players in the United Kingdom. Building upon the informal partnerships that already exist with NYJO, the MOU will extend between individual conservatoires to build a mutually supportive environment in which British youth jazz education is stimulated by the opportunity presented by a peer group of “the Best of the Best”.

Amongst a raft of new initiatives announced, CUK students who play with NYJO will be given more opportunities to gain first-hand performance experience alongside some of the UK's leading young jazz performers at both educational and commercial gigs. Indeed, NYJO was the setting of the first ever professional performance by Amy Winehouse in 2000. Students will also be given access to a network with a broader group of musicians, thereby increasing the liklihood of high-quality professional employment and the opportunity to write their own material and have it performed professionally. NYJO and each individual conservatoire will agree regional residencies, summer schools and how NYJO rehearsals, gigs, workshops or compositions can form part of student’s coursework and contribute to their degree studies or form part of a professional development programme.

In January 2012 NYJO1 will become a 30-strong “pool” of musicians, from which the senior staff will select 22 players to perform at each gig. Membership of this pool will be determined by a selection committee, consisting of NYJO Music Director Mark Armstrong, a representative of CUK, a representative of the RYJO’s, and an independent jazz musician of national repute. A fund will be set up to aid those members who live or study a long way from London. NYJO, founded in 1965 by Bill Ashton OBE, is partly funded by Arts Council England, with funding channeled via Jazz Services Ltd. The signing of the agreement by CUK Chairman, Professor John Wallace and NYJO Chairman, Nigel Tully, now provides more opportunities for students and gives NYJO greater access to a vibrant artistic and academic resource.

Professor John Wallace says: “I am delighted that CUK is reinforcing its relationship with NYJO. This partnership demonstrates that both organisations are at the heart of the cultural wellbeing of our country. It is partnerships like this that enable us to train a new generation of artists for the UK and beyond. It is important to instill a real sense of collaboration between the UK’s conservatoires and our great orchestras and companies, and this issue is an excellent starting point. I am thrilled that world class conservatoires and the outstanding NYJO are part of it, and I can think of no better environment for aspiring players in our profession to really learn the tools of their trade ”

Nigel Tully, Chairman of NYJO, added : This partnership will help cement NYJO's role at the centre of British jazz education. I'm particularly glad that our tradition of preparing young musicians for professional life sits so well alongside the training provided by our leading academic institutions, who are clearly giving jazz the attention that this serious art form deserves.”

Honorary Vice President of NYJO Sebastian Coe commented: “I'm very pleased about this exciting new partnership, which confirms what I have long thought - that NYJO is the UK's elite team for youth jazz. I look forward to even more success for NYJO, on the national and international stages.”
End of Press Release

Amy Winehouse and NYJO - photos and a tribute

Amy Winehouse singing with NYJO

Photo copyright Bill Ashton. All Rights Reserved.

Bill Ashton, Founder MD and Life President of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra writes for LondonJazz about Amy WinehouseIn my loft there is a pile of largely unmarked minidisks. One of them, dating back to July 2000, contains four tracks recorded live by the sixteen year old Amy Winehouse.

A few weeks earlier, I had had a call from Sylvia Young, Head of the eponymous Theatre School, “Mr. Ashton, I’d like to send a sixteen year old singer called Amy Winehouse to you. Neither we nor the Brit School really know what to do with her”.

“Send her along” I said cheerfully, “We don’t audition; she’ll just join in if she wants to”.

The following Saturday, a typical North London schoolgirl appeared at the Cockpit. In a voice only slightly higher than that of Michael Caine, she said, in one breath, “ullomynameisAmyWinehousethat’saJewishname”.

I sent her through to the singers’ rehearsal room, and for the next few weeks, she sat in the corner smoking for England, not joining in with anything they were doing but in the words of Annabel Williams, her singing teacher, “Whatever we were doing, she nailed it in one”.

Amy Winehouse singing with NYJO
Photo copyright Bill Ashton. All righs reserved.

In June of that year, I invited her to sing one song and the following month, I rang her early Sunday morning, “Can you sing with us today, we haven’t got a singer?”
“I don’t know your repertoire, but don’t worry I’ll learn them on the tube”.

She was a good as her word, she came through the door having learnt four songs, and sung them perfectly without any leadsheet or even a set if words. Saxophonist Alan Stuart commented, “Are you going to sign her? Because if you don’t, I will. She’s going to be a superstar”.

She left us not long afterwards, because she had hoped to sing standards with NYJO and found herself singing songs by me and other NYJO writers. She formed a trio of NYJO 2 players including drummer, Bradley Webb, and she set off around the jazz clubs. I can honestly say, she had the best jazz voice of any young singer I have ever heard, learnt from her taxi driver father, Mitch. Jewish taxi drivers having the best musical taste of anyone!

A few months later, I was approached by Simon Fuller’s 19 Management, who had launched the Spice Girls, to give them a list of young female singers. I figured that they and Amy deserved each other, so passed on her numbers to them and she went to the audition, along with singers such as Annabel Williams and Rachel Calladine.

The rest is history, and for some reason, I was sent two copies of her first album called, Frank. Some of the tracks of which are excellent jazz singing. But then, she hooked up with the ‘pop world’ and married her songs to street rhythms and became the pop icon that we all know.

When she died, on Saturday 23rd July 2011, the pop world lost an icon. The jazz world had lost a great jazz singer several years earlier.

Bill Ashton will be talking about Amy Winehouse on Piers Morgan Tonight at10 30pm on CNN