PC: How did you become a jazz musician?
SP: I come from a family of classical musicians. My grandfather was quite a clarinettist in his time, playing for Sir Henry Wood. Fortunately my parents liked jazz, particularly my dad, and I became interested in it in my early teens. Besides The Beatles, we never had any kind of pop music on at home.
I got interested in jazz at school (in the mid-1970s), where there was no jazz but plenty of good, classical music. I used to try and transcribe Kenny Ball and Chris Barber, working from a reel-to-reel recorder, playing this with my friends and writing out all the parts and solos. I often got these wrong but learned a lot. I went to college [Trinity] as a French horn player. Jazz then became more than a hobby, particularly when I had an embouchure change and switched to piano as a relief from hours of long notes! I was besotted with jazz, buying records and going to gigs all the time. The only jazz connection I had was Jazz Journal, which came out once a month. If I didn't get the one single copy of it in Great Malvern, I was distraught! I also listened to jazz on the radio, to Peter Clayton's programme, literally under the pillow because it was at 11pm at night.
At Trinity we were all on classical courses. But I went to the Barry Summer Jazz School, in about 1978, which changed my life. Jazz courses were run differently in those days. Barry was run by Gordon Beck and Tony Oxley, and it was an incredible immersion, with all those great musicians including John Taylor (whose playing I loved).
PC: As a pianist-composer, you came to prominence in the 1980s, when jazz wasn't yet mainstream in higher education. How had the landscape changed?
SP: My recollection of those days was that players thought jazz was going to die out; they couldn't understand why a bunch of young people wanted to play jazz. At that time, the Musicians' Union had their ‘Keep Music Live’ stickers and they were worried about the effects of disco – they thought it would take over, that there'd be no gigs! A few years later, things began to change. For example, there was hardly anyone who played bass. But when the Guildhall introduced a postgraduate jazz course and Trinity had their big band, with Bobby Lamb, this opened doors for new networks.
PC: When learning jazz, did you have to unpick elements of your classical training?
SP: I don't think so. I mean, chops are chops, aren't they? Put another way, did my classical training have an influence on me? I think that's a really big question and would merit an article in itself because of the assumptions around this. Some people say that if you're in the jazz court, you need to do a bit of classical, or that the best jazz players play classical. Of course, everybody knows that Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Tommy Flanagan were very good classical players. But I should think there are plenty of jazz players in the history of music who haven't played a note of classical.
Good music is good music. I'm so glad I found the music of Mozart, Britten, Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss; I love it, it formed me. But in the context of music education, it's a profound discussion because of the values people attach to styles, genres and identities – these are powerful in curriculum discussions. I don't regret anything about playing classical music. I wish I could do it properly.
PC: What led you to becoming a researcher in improvisation?
SP: In around 1998 George Odam, author of The Sounding Symbol: Music Education in Action, became head of research at Guildhall. He was a big influence on me and I liked and respected him enormously. Guildhall wanted to become the conservatoire that did research, and George said I should get involved. I remember being frustrated, thinking why have I got to do all this again? I'd been teaching for a long time, I loved teaching and always worked hard with it. But George and the Guildhall were persistent. I've described myself as ‘a reluctant researcher’, but I'm really glad I did it.
PC: What's the connection between jazz and research?
SP: I think that jazz musicians are real-time musicologists because of our relationships with the material. Improvisers are always constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing. Jazz is in and of itself a research or action-research process. Friends of mine who are musicologists and researchers enjoy talking about the actual stuff [of jazz] and the processes. They are reflective practitioners by default. Teaching research through the books I was reading was a very action-research based thing. I enjoyed it because I enjoy ideas.
PC: Jazz in Education UK, an initiative you co-chair with Pauline Black, encourages wider use of the pedagogical values of jazz. What impact has the group had?
SP: Jazz in Education UK has stuttered a bit, partly because of Covid-19. We had a really successful symposium at the Guildhall in 2000, then Covid struck and we've kept things online. Our steering group of around six people met regularly, and twice organised a national conference in Birmingham before having to cancel because of industrial action. Birmingham City University and the Conservatoire have been brilliant in their support. We've now rethought what we're going to do. We don't get any funding, so are planning on being part of other conferences. Powering up Creativity, Collaboration and Innovation across the Music Curriculum, at the University of Sussex on 19 June 2025, is the next event. The presentation by Pauline and myself will be for secondary music teachers as well as hub leaders.
We want to talk to hub leaders upwards, to policy makers. One of JIE UK's members has been very involved in the National Curriculum and Model Curriculum for Music. I'm not saying they're a fan of what's come out of this, but they contribute and are involved in the process. We also have some contact with MPs and civil servants and are proactive in trying to influence what people are talking about.
We feel strongly that a core point is teacher education. You can convene a meeting of interested people and talk about curriculum and what may or may not be useful in school; but the practicality and pedagogical activities of jazz and rhythmic musicians, of real-time musicians and improvisers, are really needed. We believe this would help classroom music in schools. We're not talking about peripatetic teaching, but the classroom music experience.
Having improvisers and rhythmic musicians in the workforce doesn't mean that current music teachers aren't good. We all know how hard they work, and they're brilliant. I've never met one who didn't care. But when only 2–3% of jazz graduates work in the classroom, it means the workforce isn't most equipped.
PC: Why is the number of jazz graduates in teaching so low?
SP: My theory is that the 17- to 19-year-olds coming to music college are generally quite conservative. When I was at the jazz department at Trinity we talked about this a lot, but I've also heard it at Guildhall. First-year music students are generally living the dream, wanting to play principal clarinet in the RPO or sing at the Royal Opera House, or whatever they wish to do – and that's right, they should have the dream. But they're sometimes quite conservative about musical practices, and one of the last things that needs dislodging is the assumption that ‘those who can't play, teach’ and ‘those who can't teach, teach PE’. There's a sense of failure if you have to teach, which is appalling and terribly sad.
Also, there's very little advocacy for teaching as a profession – and the press has a role in this. A.V. Kelly, who was head of the education department at Goldsmiths where I did my PGCE, wrote The Curriculum: Theory and Practice [first published in the mid-1970s]. It discusses the politicisation of curriculum and how this has happened. Back then, he was talking about the deliberate politicalisation of education and how governments took the discussion to the tabloid press to undermine teachers and the curriculum. That was then, but I think this contributes to the type of discussions that undermine the status of teachers, and that this is as much a contributory factor as the fact that students think that teaching is the second or third choice way to earn their money.
PC: How do we increase the number of jazz graduates in teacher training?
SP: I think the PGC courses could do more. I know leaders of these and have encouraged them to visit conservatoires to advocate for teaching. I, Nick Smart (at RAM), Jeremy Price (at RBC) and other heads of jazz are trying to encourage students [to look at teaching], but advocacy from the PGC courses would help.
Over the next ten years I'd like to see a return to PGC courses, closing down Teach First and all the other lighter apprenticeships which are a kind of temporary mentoring. We need teacher observation, presentation of lesson plans and evaluations, reference to theoretical frameworks and lesson observations. I recall very good courses run by education departments, which included lesson observations and talking about the philosophy or psychology of learning – brilliant!
A structural issue may be in the ancient behaviour of PGC courses. I'm aware that courses need resourcing adequately, but if you take the same direction as recruitment strategies addressing access and inclusion, you will get curriculum diversity. If you're not appointing music teachers who can deliver this diversity with a degree of skill, how does this compare to other subjects? Would you have maths teachers who weren't numerate; French teachers who can't speak French?
PC: How do you resource this ‘diversity of curriculum’?
SP: I'm not suggesting something instead of current teachers, but alongside them. If you are fortunate enough to have a head of music plus two part-time teachers in a department, then one of the three should be able to know the difference between Afro-Cuban music, Brazilian music, Rn'B and neo-soul. They should be able to play a bit of drums, bass, keyboards, and be able to get a vocal group going with a groove. What a great department that would be, with a person teaching the other [curriculum] stuff. It'd be so rich.
PC: Is part of the solution musicians-in-residence?
SP: You can discuss in-service training, mentoring, musicians-in-residence, but what's the legacy? What's the legacy of having a musician-in-residence for one week, one month, one term? I was musician-in-residence at a comprehensive school in Yorkshire years ago. It sounds really high status, a nice thing for an artist to talk every day, and it lasted four weeks. They then offered me a job in classroom teaching and I loved it. But you wouldn't go in saying, ‘Oh, let's go and play some of my music.’ It was about getting stuck in, which I knew how to do. Having musicians who love their music and are enthusiastic is one thing, but it doesn't mean they're going to enhance the teaching and learning, the retention of understanding long after they've gone.
PC: What would work in place of musicians-in-residence?
SP: In the short term, Pauline Black has devised a scheme in Scotland that's kind of common sense. It involves buddying up, having an experienced music teacher who knows about teaching and learning, and planning schemes of work; who understands curriculum and is an expert educator to work with. You then pair that person with a jazz musician and they co-mentor. It would probably be very effective if there were a number of clusters with an experienced facilitator to enable all of these, because mentoring can benefit from supervision as well. You could have four or five pairs, with one or two people to facilitate these.
PC: Would the facilitators you mention be at music hub level?
SP: They could be, it depends: location is a big factor. This assumes that there are suitable people living nearby. Obviously in London, Manchester or Glasgow that's feasible, but if you're working in rural Herefordshire, it's going to be harder. On the other hand, we now have Zoom. It's not implausible.
PC: Have you shared these ideas with policy makers? What's been the response?
SP: I've shared these views in conservatoires and at conferences. There's been no response so far, hence why we set up Jazz in Education UK – we want to get to policy makers. I know that my preference is not realistic in the current [economic] climate, but I think at some point people have to actually draw a line in the sand and say, ‘Look, if we're really serious about education, public health, diversity, vitamin D [half-smile], things need to change’.
PC: What are you listening to these days?
SP: I listen to Rich Perry, Gary Thomas, Marc Copland, Jimmy Giuffre Trio as well as a lot of Coltrane and Miles. Most recently, I listened to Elgar's Second Symphony – fab, but it's a bit long.
