Leeds Jazz Conference 2007

Just got back from a great conference at the Leeds College of Music.

I spent three days in the company of interesting and intelligent people, all of whom liked jazz and knew all about jazz music, and we talked about jazz, and we listened to jazz.

One of the many highlights was the performance (pictured above) of Tom Clarke, the winner of the UK Conservatoires ‘Creative Exchange’ composition competition for music students conducting his piece Katy’s Theme, performed by the Conservatoires UK Big Band.

All university students — all exceptional musicians. The best in the country. It really was quite something.

I presented a paper at the conference about jazz consumption online — and I’m really pleased with how it went. Some people asked some interesting questions that were about wanting to know more, rather than (as is more common) demonstrating how much more they know than the presenter about the subject.

The joke about questions at conference papers is that they tend to run along the lines of “You seem to have overlooked an important part of this subject, which I covered in my PhD thesis…”

More importantly, I attended some really exceptional presentations. One on Keith Jarrett and his contempt for electronic instruments was particularly good (”It was fun playing electric keyboard in Miles Davis’s band — because these things are toys, and toys are fun”); one about the idea of jazz ‘community’; one about creative non-fiction in the reconstruction of jazz histories — and quite a lot more besides.

Perhaps most impressively, many of the academics attending were also phenomenal jazz players, and since we were in the Leeds College of Music (the European answer to Berklee) and instruments were everywhere and there seemed to be pianos and drum kits in every room — jazz would just break out at every available opportunity: over lunch, in the breaks, in the middle of discussions to illustrate a point…

And when the academics weren’t playing, the students at the college seemed to just pick up and play.

It was the second of these I’d been to, and it was far better than the first — though that might have to do with the fact that I thought my presentation at last year’s one wasn’t very good.

This time, the conference was really great. Best in ages.