For Immediate Release
May 17, 2004
 

Banff Centre Leadership Lab gets creative with two-day jazz workshop

Business leaders will be dropping their briefcases and picking up microphones as part of The Banff Centre Leadership Lab’s jazz-themed workshop May 27 to 29. Led by artist facilitators Brian Tate, Brian Hayman, and Michael Gold, the sessions mix management insight and the creative elements that go into building and running a jazz combo.

Over four half-day sessions, “Advancing the Practice of Leadership through Jazz Music” will delve into principles such as managing through chaos, building relationships, and balancing an organization with its external environment. At the same time, participants will be grooving through jazz improv sessions, rhythm and percussion exercises, and the process of creating new music. The idea behind it is that an understanding of the improvisational, free-form nature of the jazz ensemble can help businesspeople manage the often improvisational and free-form elements of their workdays. Plus, picking out a beat on the drums and belting out jazz vocals is just plain fun.

“In jazz, there’s a dynamic balance between form and structure, and improvisation,” says Brian Tate, a Vancouver-based jazz vocalist and choir director with many years’ experience conducting leadership workshops. “Good management is the same way – your success is completely dependent on the individuals you’re working with at any given time, and you have to approach each new situation uniquely.”

Participants in the May 27 to 28 sessions will also benefit from being on The Banff Centre campus during Jazz at Banff, a month-long series of shows that runs from May 15 to June 12. World-class jazz musicians including Dave Douglas, Hugh Fraser, Bill Frisell, Kenny Wheeler, and Sam Rivers will be serving up nightly sessions that range from regular Saturday-night concerts to intimate, club-style improvisational jams. The Club on The Banff Centre campus will also host an interactive music presentation on Saturday, May 29 at noon which will make the link between music and leadership.

The jazz workshop is the latest in a series of creativity-based sessions developed by The Banff Centre’s Leadership Lab since September 2002. Since then the sessions have brought business leaders into contact with physical theatre and voice, movement and mask, bookmaking and creative writing, and ceramics and painting. From August 6 to 8, David Pearl from Impropera will be taking participants through the paces of an opera-themed workshop.

- 30 -

Members of the media are invited to attend some or all of the sessions in “Advancing the Practice of Leadership through Jazz Music.”

Leadership Lab contact:
Colin Funk
Program Director, Creativity, The Banff Centre

403.762.6507