I’m mainly hanging out with family today and tomorrow, I’m sat in a park in south east London right now not really doing much moving because I injured my knee… This afternoon at 4pm however I’m jumping on zoom for a free workshop “getting started with jazz violin”, just for you LJV skoolers. It’s for violinists who are totally new to jazz who want a simple way in. You can sign up via the link below or in the calendar section up top. https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/cWbXLCGRSPOcRwg_nXlFUA#/registration Let me know in the comments what you are up to this weekend! If you are practising, why not show us what you are up to with a video?

Tell me the first hurdle you came up against when starting to play jazz. I think my first hurdle was actually due to self belief. I heard Grappelli and thought “there is no way I could play that”. I loved the music but didn’t understand it and couldn’t work out how he was improvising it all. Tell me in the poll if you think your first hurdle was belief, technique, theory, rhythm, something else or and even better, elaborate in the comments.

Tell us, what is the best advice that you have ever received that has shaped your music making? When I was first becoming interested in jazz , I was in the the last year of secondary school (in England this is often called 6th form). I had gone to a local polytechnic college as it had a decent music course. My composition teacher was a really eccentric trumpet player and electroacoustic contemporary classical composer. Great guy who also had studied jazz in the past. I asked him what the chords at the end of “There Will Never Be Another You” were all about. He said “that’s the question you will probably be asking yourself on and off for the rest of your life and you might never really have a definite answer, but that’s the job of a jazz musician” Whilst it didn’t answer the question as I had wanted, it helped me realise that jazz is for lifelong study, harmony is often subjective and that really there aren’t any right answers with any of this stuff. (I’d say though that the actual answer is just, a prolonged cadence from chord I back to chord I again, often done via a few chromatic dominant chords but that’s not really essential) What’s yours?

Il be honest, I’m doing nothing jazz violin related. I’m at the Islay Whisky festival in Scotland this weekend. Today I’m at the Lagaluvin distillery day and sampling the distillers edition bottle… However I’d love to know what people are working on this weekend I’d that’s how you are spending this weekend.

Hi everyone! I am considering to buy a small microphone for the violin. Any recommendations? Pros/cons? Thank you in advance!