The community big band The Notebenders was created by my mentor Andy Hamilton (MBE) in 2004. It constitutes part of his enormous legacy, alongside the music school, the record label, and the jazz club. Since the creation of the Andy Hamilton Trust in 2007, The Notebenders band has become an ideal field for emerging musicians to develop their talent.

In order to contribute to the members’ growth as musicians, last month I had the great opportunity to do a workshop with them. For two and a half hours, we went over the complementary topics of stage performance and improvisation. At the end of the session, they went through a song that they’d play the next day at a gig for me to give some feedback, too.

The takeaway of one of the participants was that the performance starts as soon as you get off your car, and ends when you hop on again to leave. The audience wants to be entertained, taken to another place, and this won’t happen if you limit yourself to playing the right notes in the right order. Besides, as musicians, we want to have a good time, and standing there to repeat sounds mechanically isn’t fun!

I was happy to learn that the members of the band kept bringing some of the things I said up at their gig the next day. I was told that reminders like “smile and mind your facial expressions” or “don’t stay still, sway with the music” came and went. It’s rewarding to know that my advice was applied straight away.

If you’re a musician interested in acquiring or further developing this type of skills, I offer individual coaching sessions. I have also created a series of resources based on my many years of experience. You can get them all on my education website, www.successbeyondthescore.com.