What can I give?

Recently, I‘ve been thinking about what it is that I give to others and if there is something I can give that I haven‘t thought about yet. 

I have taught trombone and led different music groups for as long as I can remember. I have enjoyed this and have been very nourished by it over the years. I often feel better after coming home from teaching, somehow uplifted; even after presenting online seminars, which might seem less than optimal in terms of the personal exchange one can experience, I have felt rejuvenated and have sensed that the attendees also have enjoyed themselves. For me, music is an expression of life and when I can help someone improve their playing, that I am in fact, bringing them more into life‘s flow. 

But what else is there inside me? Can I give something else?

Perhaps the smallest things have the potential to make the largest impact on us. Using, once again, the subject of music, how many times have I heard some little thing in someone else’s playing that has led me to think about my own playing in a different way. These little moments have propelled me on to try new things, to make subtle improvements that, in the long-run, have made a sizeable difference. 

We can never know how much our actions, no matter how small, will influence others. I like the analogy that each one of us is like a single cell in a body, which we could call humanity. Each of us has, in fact, a tiny role to play, but this doesn‘t diminish the importance of our role. Every action has some effect, each single action leads to other actions. It’s like walking up a mountain. I have often been surprised by my accomplishment when I‘ve looked back at the path taken, thinking, „Wow, I just climbed that!“. We don’t notice the many small steps we take at the time we’re taking them.

I think its the same with our actions in daily life. Maybe our influence has the potential to reach much further than we think. Maybe our actions can lead others to some idea, some action, that then takes them onto a new path. And, this new path could lead them in an entirely different direction than they had otherwise gone. You just never know. 

What can I give? Maybe, just living my life in a positive way can give others much more than I ever could expect. It’s worth trying, isn‘t it?

I love collaborations!

Wolfgang and I have been collaborating since 2006 and can look back on many years of musical and personal growth, many very enjoyable concerts, rehearsals and tasty after-concert beers! Having been on the road with my family for a little more than half a year, now, Wolfgang and I haven‘t had the possibility to play together, but we still stay in touch and continue to plan future musical projects. It’s a great feeling to know that all our experiences of playing together are stored somewhere in our brains and bodies, and that in no time at all we can both be concert-ready, as if we‘d never stopped gigging.

I‘ve worked with Vincent Levesque for many years as well, albeit in a much different way than with Wolfgang. Vincent and I are colleagues at the Hochschule für Musik (University of Music) in Detmold. As well as being a fine french hornist, playing solo-horn in the Landestheater in Detmold for many years, he is also a well-respected and admired teacher of Feldenkrais. On a hunch, I started attending his Feldenkrais lessons in Detmold many years ago, really enjoyed them, and subsequently kept attending for about as long as he was living in Germany. Since living in Switzerland, he has developed his own method inspired by Feldenkrais, Contact Dance and Tango among other things, called “Inter-facing“. Vincent describes his method so:

„These seminars refine awareness in group interaction allowing an authentic, dynamic and productive mosaic of all individuals, regardless of their backgrounds and values. With respect for each individual’s space, participants are accompanied on a journey through concrete, somatic and progressive lessons. In stimulating but safe, relaxed and playful processes, they rediscover idle innate connections with exhilarating and liberating results.“

During the second half of July 2022, I will be offering two, week-long courses in musical improvisation at the Les Sauges farmstead in the Morvan region of France (that‘s where the picture above was taken). I‘m very happy to announce that Vincent will be joining me there to work with us using his Inter-facing Method. What a treat! I‘m very much looking forward to these events and to experiencing what will surely be a very interesting and inspiring musical journey.

We would love to see you there! Click here for more information!

Shawn goes on the road!

It’s mid-April, and I find myself in Portugal, in a small city just south of Lissabon. It’s warm here, often sunny and quite close to the Atlantic Ocean which certainly sets a nice scene to settle into. 

I‘m presently taking a year off from teaching and freelance playing in Germany to travel through Europe with my family. Back home there hasn‘t been much playing work to do and after three semesters of running the big band at the Hochschule für Musik in Detmold through lockdowns and contact restrictions, we‘ve decided to make the best of the situation, organized ourselves a Volkswagen T5 van and headed south-west, and its turned out to be the best thing we could have done! 

Putting our regular lives on hold, renting out our house, picking up and travelling, has given us a sense of control in our lives that we couldn‘t have experienced, otherwise. It feels great to be living so pro-actively, to be making choices as to where we want to go and what we want to do. We have seen so many beautiful places and met many wonderful people along the way. We have not travelled with set plans, but instead have relied much more on our intuition and its good to see how well this has worked for us.

Our music-making continues, in spite of having no planned performances. This has been a very reassuring experience for me; I’ve realized that I don‘t need an upcoming concert to motivate myself to play music, I just like doing it. I have come up with new ways of improving my playing and staying musically active, like practicing jazz standards to playback tracks, freely improvising, playing in interesting spaces/acoustics or with newly befriended musicians. It feels great, and I feel that as my focus has moved more towards improvisation, my trombone technique is improving in a new way. I am playing more of what I’m hearing as opposed to things that other people have heard and then written down. This is activating my embouchure in a new way and calling for more exactitude, which feels very good. Also, just generally being physically more relaxed, having no time-pressures, practically no meetings, tends to have had a positive effect on everything I do. 

Other creative outlets I‘ve found while on the road are my online activities: two Music-Channels on the Telegram platform, Discovering Improvisation and Just Great Music, my new web-site www.shawngrocott.com as well as online seminars on improvisation.

Another motivating activity continues to be my trombone teaching, which is completely online for the moment. In spite of never knowing exactly where I’ll be, I have had really good experience with internet connection. A big help here has been a Netgear Nighthawk M1 Mobile Router with external antennae which I purchased before leaving Germany. With that and an iPad Pro from 2020 it’s been smooth sailing so far. 

In spite of all the challenges of a nomadic lifestyle, we have found it very motivating and have found ourselves living much more in the moment through this experience. There are so many beautiful places in this world and its wonderful and inspirational to get out and see them. If you wish, you can follow us and our activities on the following platforms:

my new website - www.shawngrocott.com

my Telegram channels - Discovering Improvisation & Just Great Music

My partner Meike’s Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/meike_leluschko/

KlassikSommer Hamm 2021 - Meeting Friends

Er war einer der weltbekannten Opern- und Liedsänger aus Deutschland. Doch vor neun Jahren beendete er diese Karriere. Thomas Quasthoff sagt, damals habe seine Seele nicht mehr singen wollen. Seine Mutter war soeben gestorben. Der Bruder erlag einer plötzlichen Krankheit. Quasthoffs Stimme versagte.

Danach erfand sich Quasthoff, der Klassik-Star, neu: Er blieb auf der Bühne, machte Kabarett, rezitierte bei Lesungen. Doch die Musik ließ ihn nie los. Freunde brachten ihn zum Jazz, den er immer geliebt hatte. Das Mikrofon wurde sein Instrument. Trotz allem klingt Quasthoff immer noch wie Quasthoff: „Ich war und bin immer ein klassischer Sänger“, sagt er.

Stars wie Dieter Ilg, Wolfgang Haffner und Frank Chastenier wurden seine Jazz-Freunde. Dann traf er im Schatten des Matterhorns in Verbier auf „Shawn & The Wolf“. Und eine neue Freundschaft entstand: Sänger Quasthoff, Posaunist Shawn Grocott und Gitarrero Wolfgang Meyer sind nun eine ungewöhnliche Crew, die ihre Jazz-Arrangements immer neu erfinden müssen. Im Juni 2021 sind die drei Ausnahmemusiker beim KlassikSommer in Hamm live zu erleben.

Meeting friends in Elmau

Thomas Quasthoff ist einer der besten Bassbaritone der Welt. Besonders seine Interpretationen von Liedern sind wegweisend. Fast vier Jahrzehnte lang hat Quasthoff als klassischer Sänger auf internationalen Bühnen Maßstäbe gesetzt. Er trat in allen großen Konzertsälen von der Carnegie Hall bis zur Berliner Philharmonie mit den renommiertesten internationalen Orchestern und Dirigenten auf.

Mit dem Duo „Shawn & the Wolf“ bot er gemeinsam ein Konzert mit bekannten Jazz-Standards in speziell für diese Besetzung arrangierten Versionen auf Schloss Elmau. Lesen Sie hier eine Rezension aus dem Jazzportal nrw.jazz.net

Text & Fotos: Vera Marzinski