Meanwhile Space

Space urgently required for a very important community musical project

Hello.

My name is Alex Windsor and I am a jazz pianist.

I am looking for a space to run a music studio.

The project is to run jazz and salsa workshops for talented but struggling musicians, to enable us to develop our skills, and to provide free rehearsal space for established but struggling professional artists.

The project happened already - it was a massive success, but then we lost the space.

Then I heard about Meanwhile.

I am really hoping we can get a space or share a space with an existing project.

We have all the equipment, skills, talent, energy - we just need the space.

Jazz, like classical music and dance and many other things, is unprofitable. There is funding and projects out there just for the lucky few. The amount of talented people far outweighs the resources available.

We do not need money, equipment, teachers, we just need a space.

It costs around £8000 a year to go to music academies like the Guildhall, Trinity or Royal Academy of Music.

Graduates and tutors from both these music conservatiores rehearsed in the place we had before and helped out with the jazz workshops.

They said that the project I was running was as good, if not better than these top courses.

There are only limited places on these courses - each year, only a handful of musicians get the chance to study.

We don't need to go to these academies to develop our skills - we can do it amongst ourselves as a community, like we were doing before when we had the space.

We just need a space.

Please.

http://meanwhilespace.ning.com/profiles/blogs/space-needed-for-music

Tags: community, jazz, music, musicians, skint, space, studio, talent, workshop

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Permalink Reply by richard venn on May 10, 2011 at 2:01pm

Hi my name is Richard Venn. Alex and I play jazz regularly together and we will both be working to find a new rehearsal space and in running regular workshops and rehearsals once somewhere has been found.

I'd like to point out how vital a project like this in order to hone our skills to the high levels required to really entertain people with live improvised jazz. We are part of a fairly large community of active jazz musicians in London, for whom using commercially-run rehearsal spaces is just too expensive.

We run a jam session in Stoke Newington, which has proved moderately successful both as a weekly rehearsal for us and as an extra attraction for the bar owner. However two or three hours once a week is simply not enough group practice time to attain the necessary musical fluency. At the Effra in Brixton and the Haggerston in Dalston the dazzling musicianship on show draws in a large regular crowd and gives these pubs a lively, friendly atmosphere. We hope that by running these workshops and rehearsal sessions we can help to increase awareness and appreciation for quality live jazz among musicians and the general public.

Getting a space for a community music studio would benefit college-educated musicians and self-taught players alike. After all, jazz music has it's roots in rent parties, jam sessions and community music projects, even if many of today's top performers have been lucky enough to receive a conservatoire education.

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Permalink Reply by Manuela Eller on May 10, 2011 at 2:59pm

As a fan of live jazz I'd like to express my support for this initiative, which will be a great help to the London Music scene. Extra rehearsals and workshops can only be a good thing for both performers and the audience.