Tony Kofi's jazz workshop

"Our workshop will be focusing on jazz standards, which for me is the  single true vehicle of improving your jazz performance,melodic and  language approach and even personal composition, should you decided to  take that route. Many years ago I was advised by a seasoned jazz  musician to learn at least one jazz standard a week,if you know 30 of  them then you're making good progress

At the time i didn't quite  understand why I had to learn so many, I knew 3 or 4 standards and a blues, that was enough for me, or so i thought! Well of course i found  out the hard way when i went to a jam session and couldn't play any of the tunes that were called out and had to sit it out and just listen,  I noticed that some of the standards were being played at different  tempos with different grooves, sometimes in a different key signature.  It was only there and then I realized that had I'd learned a handful  of standards just like I was advised to, then I would be able to  relate more to what they were doing. Jazz standards gives you a  greater awareness of ,melody,chord structure,harmony,time and  composition, and most importantly the confidence play them in your own  style. It's one of the very few common languages where it can be  spoken and understood anywhere in the world without even speaking to  the person, I can truly say it was my foundation of how I learned to  play and perform in any given situation.

If you listen to all the jazz  greats, Charlie Parker,Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus,John Coltrane  and Miles Davis etc, they all used jazz standards as a way of building their musical styles and knowledge, and then set about writing their own melodies over them, and creating many new compositions, and now their compositions are known as standards, It's how we all learn, set  the foundation and it'll be your platform for life.

We will be taking a handful of your favourite standards, playing them totally straight, and then showing you how to perform it in a more  individualistic way, to create a more personal approach to playing  jazz standards, giving out raw materials,scales and foundation building techniques on how to keep to the melody or embellish the  melody and still sound individual, answering all those questions you've always wanted to know about why are standards so important."

Tony Kofi Jazz workshop  Saturday 2nd october at Seven Arts 2-5pm. £15/12 concession (with discounts for regular workshop attendees)

Limited places. For further information and enrolments email Jean Watson at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  or phone 0113 237 0700