This is a FREE professional development opportunity, open to all music teachers, ensemble directors, college students, and high school students who are interested in pursuing music teaching and vocal performance. 

DESCRIPTION: 

This workshop is designed to introduce musicians and teachers from all backgrounds to the way jazz players use their own version of the twelve bar blues progression as a structure for conversational improvising and creating the more extended individual melodic statements known as 'solos'.  The first block is focused on warm-ups for jazz singing that introduce some typical jazz scales and chord progressions, particularly the twelve-bar 'jazz blues', as well as the concept of swing.  The second block is focused on some basic conversational improvisation techniques, including 'trading ones' , 'trading twos' and 'trading fours' based on examples from performances by Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane.  The third block is focused on learning a simple choral arrangement of a tune based in the twelve-bar 'jazz blues' progression and incorporating improvisation based on the techniques from the first block and the materials from the first block.  Participants will receive printed scores of material from all three blocks which they will be able to use as warmups, historical examples of great improvising and choral repertoire. Please sign up using the link below so we can plan enough seating and materials. 

https://forms.gle/FyjqYAkovN4yyCheA