I arrived in Louisville, Kentucky at 4:30 am after driving for 18 hours straight from my home in San Antonio Texas. I’ve always wanted to have more command over my improvised solos, this year I’ve decided will be the year to work on improving my improvisational skills. I found myself searching online for adult jazz improvisation workshops with this caveat, it needed to be affordable. While there are some awesome adult improvisation workshops the cost can be prohibitive depending on how deep your pockets are. I decided on the Jamey Aebersold 2-day workshop, there is also a week long camp which I hope to attend at a future date. Jamey himself gives the 2-day workshop and he said that this year is his last to run the workshop. He did imply that there might be future camps, but he would teach a class and not run the show. I have heard online chatter that this is the last of this summer workshop. Time will tell, the success of the Aebersold camp is renowned, I hope it will be available next year. What I felt I got out of the 2-day workshop makes me believe the week would have been well worth it.
Jamey is on all day for 2 days, talking, playing, jamming, answering questions, etc. for 78 years young it looks exhausting, and I can only imagine 
what goes on before this event and behind the scenes. Jamey Aebersold is not only a lead jazz improvisation teacher, he is famous for his play-along albums with chord progressions for instrumentalists to practice improvisation. Jamey has also spent a lifetime participating in outreach programs such as his prison outreach program and working with the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. There is a timeline of his life in music that will be exhibited at Carnegie Hall latter this year and there is a list of all the outreach Aebersold is a part of, not only in the United States but around the world. Jamey is a very approachable person, he seems as if he has never met a stranger. He answers all his own email, he is always willing to answer any questions you send him, he wants to help you if you are willing to put the work in to improvising better. And he believes EVERYONE can improvise and has pretty much dedicated his life to proving it.
MY IMPROVISATION.
When I was younger I played with R&B groups and would ride on occasion and I am not afraid to take a solo but I also know my solos could be better. I found out this weekend at the Aebersold workshop what kind of improviser I was and why I did what I did and what I needed to do to kick it up a notch.
I use the blues scale, pentatonic, and minor-pentatonic when I solo which is the easiest way to ride successfully but is very limited to what you can do. This is because if you solo using the blues scales or pentatonic you’re just soloing over the tonic and it works but can become uninteresting or boring to the listener to over the course of an evening. I never would read chords on a chart I would just play the way I played, blues/pentatonic. The chord progressions were hurdles that I couldn’t get around, they were stumbling blocks to my groove and flow – I always fared better playing the key. I learned why this worked for me but I also learned why this limited my soloing.
THE BIG LEARNING MOMENT:
For me the big learning moment was in reading the chord progressions. In the past I would try and apply the key signature to the chords and that 
would lead me through a series of wrong notes. What I learned during the workshop was in a jazz chart you read the written notation and apply the written key signature but when it comes to the chords just read the chords and throw the key away, just play the chords. In two jazz improvisation courses and a series of private lessons on jazz improvisation that was never mentioned to me even when that was the very mistake I was making in front of the teacher. Proves one of my hot button issues I have been carrying around for decades, most people can’t teach improvisation. I wish I was able to stay for the week long workshop with it’s daily improvisation groups, I am sure I would have emerged a pretty solid improviser.
A COMMOTION
A couple of years ago on social media there was a commotion regarding the fact that Jamey didn’t hire female coaches for his clinics so I kept my intention to attend an Aebersold workshop pretty quiet, just my family knew I was going. He has now hired a female coach for the weeklong workshop – I only attended the weekend which was all Jamey all the time except for the Jam sessions. I love that music can be the great equalizer. The jam session I attended had a high school aged rhythm section that was awesome. The keyboardist was 65 or order and the horn section ran all ages, I was the only female. Of course, it doesn’t matter what sex or age you are but let’s face the facts, while there is a great number of female jazz players they aren’t well known. And I did hear it repeated at this workshop “there just doesn’t seem to be many female jazz musicians.” Being a trumpet player I can rattle off the top of my head 20 female jazz trumpet players, that’s not including saxophone, piano, guitar, bass, etc., there are plenty of top female musicians. So I don’t agree that there aren’t a lot of female jazz musicians, I just think men don’t know or listen to them. It is also true of female classical artists that play an instrument usually associated with male performers. For example, a few years ago I studied with a well known college professor getting ready for an audition. I was working on the Haydn and he suggested I listen to players that I liked how they played the piece. He suggested Andres, Wynton, the usual guys who I did like but I suggested Alison Balsom and Tine Thing Helseth and he said that he hadn’t listened to them and maybe I had better just stick to Maurice Andres. I find that Alison and Tine approach the Haydn very differently from each other and differently than Wynton or Andres, the teacher, as a college professor should be familiar with how these ladies perform this piece. And quite frankly they perform the work beautifully and men as well as women, everyone who plays the Haydn should listen to these women along with other well-known players. Their performances need to be part of the big picture.
Know the progressions
Jamey would solo over chord progressions and you had to name the tune. He gets upset if you don’t try, why are you there if you don’t want to learn.
Jamey never plays the melody, just solos over the progressions and if you want to improvise over those tunes you had better know what the progressions are, many times without a background track.
I come away is this, get Volume 1 and read, practice, play the whole volume. That’s the start – just the start but a good place to start. Listen – not to the melody but the chord progressions – then play the melody by ear. Next move to the ii-V Book, Volume 3, then Volume 24 Major-Minor, which should have been Book 2 accourding to Aebersold.
Finally
I am so glad I attended the Aebersold weekend in Louisville Kentucky. My AirBnB was less than a mile from the campus. Plenty little restaurants in the Germantown area surrounding the University, I suggest ‘Eiderdown,’ a small German tavern. Great home-style German food and plenty of beer on tap. I like an AirBnB because I am always more comfortable playing my horn at my leisure in a house than worrying about my sound traveling in a hotel room. I do hope to go again next year if the workshop is continued. I usually go to a workshop and Malcolm McNab’s in Azusa California is my favorite so far but I think the Aebersold week long workshop would be right up there.