The Toronto-based jazz trumpeter and author Chase Sanborn joined participants in ITG’s Youth Day to do a master class on beginning jazz improvisation. Sanborn, together with Aiden Bubeck, bass, Dave Kernes, drums, and Joey Carter, piano began the session by performing the famous jazz standard All the Things You Are. Following the performance, Sanborn informed the audience that the group had never met or played before that moment. The fun of jazz, he explained, is that you can get four people together, and make beautiful music.

Sanborn asserted that the most important part of music is expressing what is inside of you. As a classical musician, you are an interpreter, but as a jazz musician you are also a composer. Sanborn passionately implored the young people in the audience to express themselves. “At whatever level you find yourself, music has to mean something to you,” said Sanborn. He used the example of a two-year-old making a painting. The child paints with total abandon. If you play that way in jazz, everything you play is going to be “right.”

Moving to a discussion of melody in jazz, Sanborn cited the influence of the late Chet Baker. Melody stands all by itself, and is not determined by harmonic and rhythmic complexity. Sanborn played Mary had a Little Lamb, which he cited as an example of a great melody that has stood the test of time. To illustrate that a melody can be simple and still beautiful, Sanborn and the jazz trio played a ballad, the jazz standard My Romance. Sanborn had a great quote he shared with the audience after the song, “The essence of jazz is playing what you hear, but make sure you hear something worth playing.”

The wonderful way that Sanborn has of relating with young people was evident. He talked on a level that made him easily understood. He concluded the session with renditions of the jazz standard’s Summertime and Straight No Chaser. The ovation he and the trio received were well deserved, and added a lot to the ITG Youth Day experience.