Kelly Rossum

What is the single most valuable thing you can do with your jazz students?

While teaching jazz improvisation you, as a teacher, must play with your students. The foundation of any jazz experience is participation and listening. Why do so many beginning improvisers have a poor playing concept? It’s because they only hear each other during rehearsals and have no mature musical role model.

Talking and lecturing to students has value in a classroom, but the majority of comprehension and retention in any subject comes from active participation. Jazz improvisation is possibly the best example of learning through participation.

Kelly Rossum © Andrea Canter

Ego is more transparent than we as educators realize. Ask your students who their favorite teachers are and then observe those teachers in the classroom. Most of the time, those teachers check their ego at the door. By learning alongside your students, you subject yourself to the same peer evaluation you are asking of your students. You can, however, participate appropriately depending upon your own current level of jazz improvisation experience.

Below are the various student-to-teacher skill comparisons along with some strategies for moving forward.

Students: Beginning jazz improvisers
Teacher: Beginning jazz improviser

Everyone play together; with you as the teacher learning right alongside your students. You have the musical ears to guide the class in the right direction, but don’t be afraid to try things that may not "sound good". This will give the students the freedom to try as well, without fear.

Students: Intermediate jazz improvisers
Teacher: Beginning jazz improviser

Play with your students to give them a sense of self-confidence and always push yourself and the students to higher levels of understanding. Remember, you are there for them to develop a positive attitude and to motivate them to succeed; you are not there to prop up your false sense of musical superiority. Jazz is about honesty.

Students: Advanced jazz improvisers
Teacher: Beginning jazz improviser

Ask the students questions. Have them demonstrate for you, try to play up to their level. Plus, make sure they have other jazz role models in their lives. You can inspire them to love music, but point them in the direction of other specific jazz teachers. Learn a jazz transcription from your favorite jazz record and use it as an example for the students.

Students: Beginning jazz improvisers
Teacher: Intermediate jazz improviser

Go for it. Share what you have learned while pushing yourself and your students. Pick repertoire that you personally want to explore. Your enthusiasm will light a fire within your students’ hearts and minds. This is the most common student-teacher alignment when it comes to jazz improvisation.

Students: Intermediate jazz improvisers
Teacher: Intermediate jazz improviser

Encourage each other as equals. Explain your personal weakness to the students and inform them of how you are strengthening that aspect of your playing. Everybody has strong suits. Find yours and share that with the students while encouraging them to develop their strengths and identify their weaknesses.

Students: Advanced jazz improvisers
Teacher: Intermediate jazz improviser

Discuss secondary instruments with the students. Have them rotate on the piano while you continue on your main instrument. Explore in detail the common jazz forms of blues and rhythm changes.

Students: Beginning jazz improvisers
Teacher: Advanced jazz improviser

Play the Bass! This is the most critical sound entering into a young jazz musician’s ears. It defines time, style and key, plus you begin to understand the harmonic flow of a composition in an entirely different manner.

Student: Intermediate jazz improvisers
Teacher: Advanced jazz improviser

Be ready to demonstrate musical concepts on multiple instruments, not just your own specialty. Demonstrate piano voicings and rhythmic interplay while comping during solos. Demonstrate a definitive swing pattern on the ride while conveying its fundamental importance to the groove. Use your knowledge of the overall ensemble goal to shape the students’ individual decisions.

Student: Advanced jazz improvisers
Teacher: Advanced jazz improviser

Demonstrate practice techniques. Communicate advanced ensemble concepts that begin to stray from the traditional roles of each instrument.

With extremely advanced students, class lectures will deliver much of the needed information, but not all. A skilled teacher would know to play when words fail. Demonstrating a specific technique or approach will immediately give the students the needed aural advice. Rehearsals are about the interaction within the group and developing a band sound concept. These students should be able to stand on their own at the concerts, so the rehearsal process must include independent student jazz explorations. Consider this group a fully functioning basketball team, ready to go out on the stage by themselves and make their coach proud.

As a teacher, you must decide whether or not you take jazz education seriously. Jazz cannot be taught through textbooks and lectures, jazz cannot be taught through clever Power Point presentations, jazz cannot be taught on a black board, jazz must be shared live and in person through active participation.

We are all students. From the very first note to your final performance, there is always more to learn. Take the journey together with your students, encourage and motivate them, and when the time comes to step back and let them shine, enjoy their performance. There will always be more next year.

About the author: Kelly Rossum is a jazz musician and composer, a frequent guest soloist and clinician at jazz festivals, and currently directs the jazz program at MacPhail Center for Music in downtown Minneapolis. Visit www.KRossum.com for more information on Kelly and his career.

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