Renowned singer and vocal coach Samantha Edwards believes that jazz opens up new horizons of music. She is hosting a three-hour workshop on Saturday, May 14, at the NCPA, which will touch upon technical aspects like scales and beats.
Samantha, who has been teaching contemporary music for the past decade, states, that jazz involves a lot more skill than just having an enviable voice. She says, “A jazz singer is a storyteller. When the storyteller is good at his/her job, it touches a chord with the audience.”
Elaborating on her workshop, Samantha says, “We’ll start off with simple scales and scat exercises and later go into the more complex varieties and touch upon jazz beats.” For the next level, Samantha will split the participants into groups and have them compose a few numbers. The night will end with a jugalbandi-like interaction with Samantha and all the participating members belting out melodies of their own composition.
Samantha is looking forward to a mixed bag of participants at the workshop. She says, “The last time when I did a workshop, there were participants as young as eight years old and as old as 60.” With expert jazz pianist and fellow colleague from the Samantha Edwards Collective, Faustin Missier by her side, she hopes to teach both novices and trained singers the finer nuances of jazz.
“The biggest misconception that people have about jazz is that it’s dying,” says Samantha, “but there are quite a lot of people who are interested in the genre.”
The performer believes that jazz, with its variety of scales and rhythms, intimidates the layman. While she does concede that jazz is a complex genre where one needs to learn different song forms and bars, like the 12 bar blues and the 16 bar blues, she breaks the myth that jazz singers cannot sing other genres of music. “Once you’ve got a hang of jazz, you can, in fact, take any simple song and give it a whole new style.”
On May 14, 7 pm At Little Theatre, NCPA, Nariman Point Tickets: Rs 300
