National Youth Jazz Orchestra: The Open Fund for Organisations
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New Commissions Promoting and Celebrating Women in Jazz
The National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NYJO) is the UK’s pre-eminent provider of jazz education. Its flagship orchestra is the ‘gateway to the profession’ and has helped launch the careers of many of the country’s most renowned jazz musicians including Guy Barker, Amy Winehouse, Mark Nightingale and Laura Jurd. NYJO celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2015 and released a critically-acclaimed double-album ‘NYJO FIFTY’. But NYJO is now so much more than an orchestra. Our weekly Saturday Academy offers ensemble, aural and improvisation training for around 100 younger musicians of varying levels, and NYJO delivers learning and participation work wherever the orchestra tours around the country, in partnership with Music Education Hubs, schools and universities.
NYJO’s 2018 commissions form part of their wider ‘EQ Project – remixing the gender balance in jazz’. Running for the whole of 2018, this project encompasses a number of initiatives designed to rebalance gender representation across its work and the wider jazz industry. Works have been commissioned from Laura Jurd, Issie Barratt, Yazz Ahmed and Nikki Iles, bringing new voices and influences to the NYJO repertoire and the big-band genre. We intend that all these composers, or a nominated soloist, will join us as a guest artist at the premiere in 2018, after which the works will enter the NYJO repertoire to be enjoyed for years to come.