Normally, students are notified by mail to arrive shortly before 2 PM on the first day of the course with their instruments and music and whatever else they might need during the course. As they are all being signed in, they have time to get a coffee or soft drink and then a welcoming meeting begins. After greeting the students and introducing themselves, Professor Viera and the faculty inform them of the schedule and location for the various classes, and assign them their respective head teacher according to their instrument of preference. Students then find their way to the classroom of their specific instrument teacher who assigns each student to two of the 14 different playing groups, according to their proficiency, and gives them an appointment for their individual half-hour instrument lesson starting the next morning. Then there is a short coffee break and everyone goes to their first class. There is no messing about. After a short introduction, the teacher hands out music and the playing begins. There are two teaching sessions each afternoon, with a coffee break between, starting at 2 PM and lasting till 6 in the evening. Then students are free to have supper and later return to the Jazz Keller to get into a jam or just listen, or visit other clubs, or whatever else they may wish to do. On the first day of the course a concert is put on by the faculty, after which the students can jam through the rest of the evening.
Requirements
The school does have certain rules and guidelines, however there are no requirements other than the student should have an instrument and have a certain knowledge of it.
Personally, I would think that anyone who has studied an instrument seriously for one year and has learned to read music well enough to play from it would certainly benefit from participating in the courses and noticeably improve his playing technique and ability to play with other musicians. Now you know something about the school and how it works, I would like to add something about the atmosphere and feeling among the students. I progressively realized after attending my second course that the school functions almost like a club or family reunion, and many of the students are repeats - they return course after course or year after year. So attending the school once is a learning and enjoying experience, but attending a second and third course is also a bonding thing, you see both old friends and make new ones and conversations that started in the last course spontaneously start back up almost where they left off. Maybe it’s like they say, “The family that plays together stays together.”
I like to remeber what my old friend Jacques Pelzer once said, “It’s not so much a question of playing well together, it’s a question of understanding each other.”
If you think you might wish to participate in one of the coming Jazz courses, please contact me or the Burghausen Jazz Association.
