Redefining musical excellence

GIVING JAZZ ITS DUE

Learning any style can be hard. But it can also be easy. Good assessment is about separating the easy from the hard.

The radical idea behind the new jazz Grade exams was simple and inclusive: to provide beginner jazz musicians with the same structured curriculum and meaningful qualifications that their classical counterparts had always enjoyed. Jazz was at last being recognised as being "worthy of study", but that recognition needed to filter down into mainstream education. And the ABRSM got it.

The task was to give stylistically open educators, most of them classically trained, the tools to approach jazz and other styles with confidence and authenticity.

To do this, we focused on three key skills, all of which we assessed from beginner level upwards:

• All learners can improvise – we can create as well as recreate at every level.

• Learning by ear helps you engage with what you play more creatively.

• Groove, pulse and rhythm are key to all musical styles.

The ABRSM's jazz exams have now been running for over 25 years. We gave them a new jazz boat, new jazz oars, and taught them how to row. As a result of that change-making work, thousands of children and adults who previously had no opportunity are now playing jazz. That approach continues in ABRSM's newer syllabuses. But there is more to do.

STARTING FROM WHERE LEARNERS ARE

Musical excellence takes many forms, and with AI it will take many more in the years ahead.

Jazz education is just one example of the way that music education remains a long way from real-world music-making.

As a result, only certain people participate and engage in music education. Jazz musicians, pop musicians, musical theatre singers, and those whose lived experience is rooted in non-Western musical traditions are often forced to learn outside the education system—informally, through experience and in community.

To increase participation and engagement, we need to reintroduce that sense of community into music education. We should reconnect music education with the real world. Learners of all ages should be performing in all kinds of contexts, both in and beyond schools, colleges and universities.

Musical learning should be a balance of informal learning and genuinely open one-to-one and group teaching, led by educators whose expertise extends beyond their own stylistic backgrounds.

We need to empower and develop learners' own tastes, individuality and cultural backgrounds through their music-making. Let's start from where learners are.