In 2021-22, NYJO Learning ran three holiday projects with featured educators including Jas Kayser, Blue Lab Beats, Byron Wallen, and FLOetic Lara. These projects were designed to encourage young people who live near NYJO’s home of Woolwich Works to engage in new music-making opportunities, meet other like-minded young musicians, build confidence, and have fun exploring their own creativity.
In October 2021, Byron and FLO worked together with a group of young musicians from Greenwich who were all fairly new to instrumental learning. Byron led on creative content that helped the young people to explore rhythm exercises, ensemble playing, and improvisation. FLO focused on performance skills, building the group’s confidence in singing, using a microphone, spoken word, and songwriting.
I learnt more about improvisation which is useful and fun. As well as how to make a song using lyrics and the keyboard.
October 2021 Holiday Project Participant
In February 2022, Jas Kayser delivered NYJO’s second holiday project at our Woolwich Works home. Over three days, young people with varying levels of skills and experience explored the influence of the female jazz greats, alongside experimenting with Cuban rhythms, pitch, tempo, and ‘feel’.
I enjoyed having fun with everyone, making friends, feeling confident about soloing, biscuits & Uno, improving my listening.
February 2022 Holiday Project Participant
I feel more comfortable playing in a group, I have progressed to feeling confident in soloing, by not needing to always use written scores I find it easier to play music on the keyboard.
February 2022 Holiday Project Participant
NYJO Learning’s four-day Summer Lab project in August 2022 was led by Grammy Award-winning producer duo Blue Lab Beats. The project allowed young musicians – including producers, vocalists, digital music makers and instrumentalists – aged 14-18 the chance to develop their skills and experience in the merging of live and digital music-making.
The best thing about the project was getting to work with a mixture of musicians and producers, combining electronic music with jazz instruments.
Summer Lab 2022 Participant
We created a track together which I loved doing because it mixed beats with digital and we all got to have our say in the track.
Summer Lab 2022 Participant
We would like to say an enormous thank you to everyone who worked on or supported one of NYJO’s Holiday Projects in the 2021-22 period. In particular though, we would like to celebrate the enormous creativity, enthusiasm, and openness shown by all of the young people who took part in these Holiday Projects. It was so wonderful to see young musicians from across Greenwich and the surrounding areas explore music-making together, taking creative risks, and embracing new ideas. We hope that we’ll see you all again very soon!
If you’re interested in attending one of our Holiday Projects in the future, please contact NYJO’s Learning Programmes Manager Beth Ismay at [email protected] to be added to our mailing list.