Amerika Haus NRW@School

»Jazz. An American Heritage«

22 students from the “Gymnasium am Moltkeplatz” in Krefeld enjoyed two lessons of a special kind. The American jazz musician Jacob Duncan, John Goldsby and Jason Tieman changed the classroom into a jazz club.

In a combination of performance and information the students not only learned about jazz. They also learned about the road to success of a musician. "You need to practice for a thousand hours before you are really good at something", said John Goldsby, a famous professional jazz bass player, " that means that you spend about three hours each day for 10 years.....!" The three American jazz musicians showed the students that passion and fun as well as hard pracitce are the important ingredients of success, no matter what you chose to do: play basketball, play the drums or mathemetics. They also proved that pop songs may sound better in form of a jazz song.

After the greeting form Ms. Metzen (Director of the Amerika Haus e.V. NRW), Ms Stein (teacher at the Gymnasium am Moltkeplatz) and two students the musicians started with a typical American jazz song called “I love you”. In an interesting presentation showed John Goldsby important points for success. He showed the difference between a high-flyer and a geek, the meaning from passion and perseverance (practice 10000 hours) and that you should always have a goal.

After that the musicians played famous jazz songs as well as their own compositions. The highlight was their interpretation of the the song “Paparazzi” by pop diva Lady Gaga. To the astonishment of the three musicians, the students even liked this new jazz-interpretation better than the original. John Goldsby concluded the session by explainig jazz lingo to the students and how it has found its way into every-day youth kanguage, too. During the last song “Blue Monk” the musicians showed how they keep to the notes and also how each of them improvises without losing track of the actual composition.