Who plays jazz?

I was thinking about this as I was reviewing the weekly post. We've got quite a selection of folks coming to the jazz workshop. About half of us are retired from our careers and now have enough time to pursue avocations like playing music. We've had college students, high school students, a divinity student, a nurse, a medical doctor, a psychologist, a hospital administrator, a commercial artist, an artist artist (for lack of a better way of putting that), a bookkeeper, a hotel manager, a college professor, a couple of building painters... it's a wide variety of folks who are interested in playing jazz. We've also had people come through the workshop who have gone on to be professional gigging musicians.

What we don't have is people who are going to harshly criticize you. You might get some tips and advice but you're not going to get yelled at if you flub a note or six. We've all done it (and yours truly continues to do it every so often).

Whatever your reasons for wanting to develop your abilities at playing jazz, come on down and give the workshop a try. You might feel like a fish out of water, as one e-mail inquiry put it to me earlier this week, but that's OK. We've all been there, we know how it feels, and this is an opportunity to get past that awkward phase. Once you're a little bit comfortable with it, jazz is a lot of fun!