In February 2026, we had the absolute pleasure of welcoming a group of young people aged 14-18 to our Woolwich Works home for a half-term project led by the incredible Sam Eastmond.
This project took its inspiration from the legendary NYC composer John Zorn and his MASADA Books. Across the two days, NYJO Lead Educator Sam Eastmond supported young people to learn and explore a key mode for this music, helping them to understand how to integrate improvisation and experimentation into the core of their music-making, to learn and play pieces within this sound world, and to create their own arrangements using hand signals and spontaneous organisation.
” I enjoyed learning new music and the freedom that came with it!”
Evie, Holiday Project Participant
“I learnt how to comfortably express myself amongst a Big Band.”
Juliette, Holiday Project Participant
“My personal highlight is hearing young musicians connect with music and start to use it as a tool for self-expression. Losing themselves in getting inside a sound. It is life-affirming when a young musician takes their first steps into improvisation and finds joy.”
Sam Eastmond, NYJO Lead Educator
With the leadership of Sam, alongside NYJO Emerging Professional musicians Jared Meade, Red Fielder Van Kleeff, and Eve Bolton-Gabrielsen who acted as Assistant Educators on this project, the young people were able to build their ensemble-playing skills, focus on improving their confidence in improvising, and really enjoy playing music together.
“I learnt that music looks scary, until it isn’t and it actually becomes your favourite piece ever!”
Edwin, Holiday Project Participant
“I learned my ABC’s from Sam: Always Be Cool!”
Isabele, Holiday Project Participant
At the heart of this project was our mission to ensure that young people are achieving tangible learning through fun, holding the joy of music-making at the core of everything that we do.
“I really hope they took away new ideas of what jazz and improvising can be, such as loud, messy and just generally fun! I think the low stakes approach of enforcing that there are no wrong notes or mistakes, just being confident, is a lesson I wish I had learned at that age!”
Jared Meade, NYJO Emerging Professional and Assistant Educator
At the start of the project, we asked the young people to rate from 1 to 10 (with 1 being ‘not at all’ and 10 being ‘extremely’) how confident they felt in improvisation. Their mean response at this point was 5.6. We then asked them to rate this again at the end of the project, and their mean response had increased to 6.9.
“It was great to see young people of such a wide age range able to play together. Such a large and new ensemble is hard to manage, but Sam did a fantastic job of not only getting them to understand the music but be able to improvise on it, even if they had never improvised before. I didn’t get opportunities like that in my musical education until my late teens, so it was great to see younger musicians taking part.”
Eve Bolton-Gabrielsen, NYJO Emerging Professional and Assistant Educator
It was so special to see such a significant increase in their improvisatory confidence after only 2 days of working with these young people. So many young people don’t get a chance to explore improvisation until much later in their music education; the longer it’s left before you have a chance to try it out, the more daunting it can often seem!
That’s what made it such a joy seeing young people have a go at improvising across these 2 days, building their confidence behind (and away from!) their instruments, learning that it’s okay to make mistakes when you’re trying new things, and holding onto the joy of music.
At the end of the sessions, we also asked the young people to rate from 1 to 10 (with 1 being ‘not at all’ and 10 being ‘extremely’) how much they enjoyed making music with others; their mean rating was 9.3. We can’t think of a better outcome to this project than that.
If you’d like to get involved in our offer for young people aged 18 and under, drop us an email anytime at [email protected].