An extra tutor came in on Wednesday and for the evening session the four tutors formed a standard saxophone quartet (i.e. soprano, alto, tenor and baritone) and held a workshop on quartet playing that turned into a superb concert.

The following morning the new chap, Alastair by name, held a session designed to introduce basic jazz ideas.  I listen to a lot of jazz but have no idea of the musical structure behind it and the idea of improvisation has always seemed mysterious so I was very interested. He gave a spiel on some of the various scales and chord structures used and demonstated a few common jazz rhythms complete with demos.

Then he declared it was our turn.  He launched a blues backing track and said he would point at people as it played for them to improvise using  the techniques he'd described.  He pointed first at some guy who's been playing jazz for twenty years (don't know why he was at that session) and then horror of horrors he pointed at me.

I suppose you could say that the half dozen carefully rehearsed notes that I played in Hamlet was my first excursion into jazz but this was throwing in at the deep end stuff.  I didn't drown but you couldn't say that I swam an entire length before climbing out of the pool.  I'll be diving in again though.