Lively rhythms filled the Hapnot Collegiate gym last Sunday, Nov.1 as students from Flin Flon, The Pas and Thompson performed pieces honed over a weekend of intensive music clinics at the NorMan Jazz Festival.
“It’s a working festival,” explains Hapnot music teacher Kim Jones, who coordinated the weekend along with Anna Jardine, music teacher at École McIsaac School.
The festival is held each year in The Pas, Thompson or Flin Flon. Over the weekend, students experimented, improvised and explored the jazz genre with their peers, their teachers and visiting musicians.
Eleven music clinicians, including professors of jazz music and leading jazz educators, came from Winnipeg, Brandon and Gimli to work with the six bands assembled for the festival.
“The jazz musicians help with improvisation and style,” says Jones.
The clinicians also led focused sectional sessions during the festival, giving the young musicians a chance to gain a better understanding of their instruments.
All the bands at the festival learned a new tune over the weekend, a jazz standard called “Mercy Mercy Mercy.”
True to the form of jazz music, each band took a different approach to the song, as students tried out new techniques to adapt the music on the page, and make the tune their own.
On Sunday morning, each band performed two pieces for an audience of parents, teachers and friends. In addition, the visiting clinicians, many of whom had never met before the weekend, quickly put together a new set for the show, modelling the improvisational techniques they had focused on with students.
Attendees at the NorMan Jazz Festival included 44 students from Thompson, 22 from The Pas and 30 from Flin Flon schools Hapnot Collegiate and École McIsaac School.
