This is the NYJO Under 18s Ensemble.
We are currently based at the Woolwich Works building, in the borough of Greenwich, South East London.
My name is Winston Clifford, and I’m the Resident Musical Director for the Ensemble group.
The age range of the group is typically between 14 and 18 years.
We meet on Saturdays, usually from 11:00 – 13:30.
We regularly look at a fairly broad spectrum of musical styles, ranging from Jazz and Jazz-related music, to Rock, Pop, Reggae, Calypso, Soul, Funk, Fusion and other popular styles.
In recent years the Ensemble has performed many times at our Woolwich Works base, as well as various well established London Jazz venues, including Ronnie Scott’s and Brasserie Toulouse Lautrec.
My personal approach to Jazz/music education (and education in general) is to keep it as fun-based as possible, and to encourage young musicians (and all musicians) to firstly attempt to use their ears as their main source of receiving information.
The idea is to ‘internalise’ the musical concept being introduced to them, strictly as sound, and to move their bodies in time, whilst vocalising the exercise.
From here they can incorporate other learning tools, such as notation.
I find that clapping, counting, moving, dancing and singing (as a group) forms a good bond, a sense of teamwork, and helps to internalise musical concepts within the body and mind, prior to playing an instrument.
It also works for singers/non-instrumentalists, as a way of solidifying a sense of time, pulse and groove, to make performance more accurate and confident.
We would always aim to start in a simplistic fashion, gradually introducing greater levels of complexity.
Eventually, everyone is ideally playing their instrument, or singing, with freedom of expression, and an awareness of ‘shared energy’ within the group dynamic.
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Winston Clifford
Resident MD
NYJO U18s Ensemble
“Ensemble is a place for expression. You never know what’s going to happen in these sessions. Sometimes Winston shows us some crazy piece that he wants us to play and we just listen to it and work it out by ear. By the end, all of us are playing this song, jamming, improvising and feeling the music – practically ready to perform. Other times, Winston gets us standing in a circle and we play through a percussive groove. It’s almost hypnotic. There’s something about physically moving with music that really makes you feel it. It makes me realise how much I can feel music inside me and how much I want to do it in life. I want to move with Winston, I want to clap with the people around me, I want to stomp my feet to the music.”
Pixie, NYJO Under 18s Programme Member
If you are interested in joining our NYJO Under 18s programme, please get in touch today by emailing [email protected].