JAZZ GRADE EXAMS, UK AND WORLDWIDE

The radical idea around the new jazz Grade exams was simple and inclusive: to provide beginner jazz musicians the same opportunities for a structured curriculum and meaningful qualifications as classical learners have always enjoyed. Jazz, an African American music with a global reach, was at least being recognized as being ‘worthy of study’. The ABRSM ‘got it’.

In the process, we introduced mainstream educators, mostly classically trained, to the idea that all kids can improvise after only a year of playing, and gave educators and learners the tools to improvise themselves.

I was lucky enough to be appointed Lead Jazz Consultant to the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) from 1998 to 2007. As Lead Consultant, I initially led a team that developed the new repertoire, scales and tests for the exams, and piloted them in schools, and then redrafted them over 2-3 years. They had to be ‘real jazz’, and they also had to work for mainstream teachers. What followed was 52 associated publications for beginner jazz musicians in piano, wind and brass instruments. One of these was ‘Jazz Piano from Scratch’, an established tutor book for beginner jazz pianists, still available worldwide from Hal Leonard and ABRSM Publishing.

Starting in the UK in the late 1990s, we then gradually rolled out the exams internationally. This involved training the new jazz examiners, how to assess jazz rigorously and make the exams fun rather than like going to the dentist. It also involved jazz workshops with many thousands of instrumental and vocal teachers in the UK and around the world, to give them jazz skills, and train them how to use the materials. I am still in touch with many of them.

Altogether the team commissioned and and edited over 75 compositions and arrangements by arrangers from all corners of the jazz world. Initially, it was just for piano alone, but later more were added for each of the other instruments. Allies and now lifelong friends from that time of intense musical creativity and new music education thinking include Nikki Iles, Pete Churchill, Simon Purcell, Scott Stroman, Leslie East, Hywel Davies, Phillip Mundey, Mark Armstrong, Martin Norgaard, Michelle James and Katherine Knight.

Together the team established 5 new levels of achievement (Grades 1-5) through the definition of innovative assessment criteria, which assess key jazz skills including improvising, working by ear and reading lead sheets.

Other opportunities followed. In the days of IAJE (International Association for Jazz Education), this led to giving frequent clinics at US conferences including New Orleans (1999), Long Beach (2004) and New York (2005). With Jamey Aebersold, I was one of two members of the IAJE Resource Team, appointed to answer questions and write articles for teachers about teaching improvisation.

I grew to love that world, and continue my connection with world jazz education now as a member of the Editorial Board of the Jazz Education Network (JENRing). THhere, I support the work of jazz educators and researchers, who write academic articles and papers.

Key educational principles which made the jazz exams unique were to introduce improvisation from day 1, to teach the skills of pulse, rhythm and groove, and to insist on working by ear as well as from notation. Our repertoire lists all included new jazz writing, brand new contemporary jazz compositions, alongside simple but authentic arrangements of standards and 12 bar blues. Creation and recreation were embedded into the assessment process, such that each candidate had to improvise a total of 6 times in their exam.

The ABRSM’s jazz exams have been going now for over 25 years. We genuinely gave a major player in world music education a new boat, new oars, and taught them how to row. Looking back, I am still proud that, as a result of the work of our dedicated team of jazz musicians and educators, thousands of kids and adults that had no opportunity previously are now playing jazz.