In the midst of summer who new I would be in school! But the3 school I went was a little bit different then what you would think. I was in a camp for a week about Afro-American Jazz. This was a great experience for me, because I play the trumpet and this camp taught me so much wether it was actually playing, improvisation, theory and playing within a group. Now as you may have already figured out through the title but this was at the VSO school of Music. My amazing teachers here were a wide variety because it wasn’t only for trumpet players but it was for players from Stand up Bass to saxophones even singing and from all ages, from my age to 60 year olds(though I was one of the youngest players there). And the teachers how taught us so much were Jodi Proznick, Miles Black, Bill Coon, Kelly Proznick, Steve Maddock, Jesse Cahill, Rod Murray and Steve Kaldestad. They were all so amazing and taught me so much. And I got to know most of them because in a day you weren’t just assigned to one teacher, in the morning you would do a group game or something to get to know each other. Then you would have a theory class and there were three levels you could choose Beginer, Intermediate and Advanced (they all had different teachers) I chose begins because I really didn’t know much and this was taught by Jodi Proznick. After that we had master classes, this was where we would get together with the other people who played the same instrument as us so for me trumpet, and this was taught by Rod Murray. Then it was lunch and since the school was on Robson st there was a wide selection for that 😀. And after lunch we had combo rehearsals , where we put with a couple of other people and one of the coaches above and would practise songs because we had a concert on the last night to play for our family and friends, and in my group our coach was Steve Kaldestad. And then finally to end the day we had big band where not everyone but horns and a rhythm section played big band songs for the concert on the last night. And all of this from 9am-5pm was exhausting but you couldn’t wait for the next day.

This all taught me so much and was an amazing experience. It taught me how to solo WAY better ( I had four solos in the one concert) it taught me how to play, how to play with people and it just built my confidence! I’m hoping to go in this next summer as well so that I can learn even more.