Just a few more days and I’ll be packing my bags and heading back to sunny South Africa.
It has been an absolute privilege to spend these past three months at the Royal Northern College of Music. All that I have learnt and experienced just cannot be quantified. I have received individual instrumental lessons from world class tutors, attended a variety of lectures, masterclasses in several different fields of study, taken part in a Gospel choir and a big band ("Jazz Collective") and been to a startling number of concerts. I am extremely grateful in particular to Mike Hall, Eileen Guppy and Rob Buckland for sharing their expertise with me.
On top of all of this we had the privilege of spending three weekends with Richard and Morag Michael. Morag took us through the details of the ABRSM Jazz exams and we each sat a Grade 1 exam for which we received a full written report. This was a useful exercise in terms of preparing our own students for ABRSM Jazz. Richard’s passion for jazz and jazz education is contagious and we left after our third weekend armed with ideas, teaching aids and enthusiasm to "spread the groove". We also spent time over the last two weekends observing, training and performing with FYJO (Fife Youth Jazz Orchestra) and it was fascinating and inspiring seeing how much these young people are able to do without sheet music, and their confidence in improvising solos.
As these three months draw to a close I can’t help reflecting on what a different life this has been from the norm of my daily teaching; living the free life of a student, taking knowledge in rather than giving it out and spending hours practising as opposed to encouraging my own students to do so. It has been wonderful to visit parts of this beautiful country – the Peak District, Lake District, Yorkshire Dales, York, Liverpool and, of course, London. We also had the excitement of seeing snow in Scotland and a day of sight-seeing in Edinburgh.
These three months have been an incredible experience and I know that my teaching will never be quite the same again. As the temperatures continue to drop I cannot deny that I am longing for the warm beaches of home!
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