Pupils get a musical masterclass for Derry Jazz Festival

"It definitely is an older style of music and an older generation's style of jazz, but there's a recent growing movement of young brass bands mixing modern pop music into this kind of traditional jazz, which brings in a lot of youngsters with tunes that they already know."

Bronagh O’Neill, aged 14 who sits on the Youth 19 Young Peoples’ Marketing and Events Steering Group, and is involved in organising and delivering the events for the year said: “I am really happy to be involved in organising all of the events for Youth 19, but especially the Youth Jazz programme, given my love of jazz music. “I have both performed and attended the jazz festival the past four years and the energy around the town is always amazing. “Everyone that’s there enjoys the music, dancing and all the stalls etc. “This year, the programme is packed full of different kinds of entertainment for everyone including youth 19’s events in the nerve centre, that I am really excited about to be down and around again this year!”

The student becomes the master

At least a hundred pupils, ranging from age eight to 15, were banging on drums, blowing on trumpets, shaking maracas and singing smoothly in true jazz fashion. By the end of the hour-long course, the sound of brass was blazing across the entire school ground. The children were playing along perfectly and Foyle College's head of music, Brenda O'Somachain, was in awe. "Our kids are fabulous. To have a musical talent is a great thing," she says. "To be able to nurture that talent, we are really lucky to be able to do that, to give them the opportunity to enjoy working with professionals like they are today and learning about a style of music that they might not have played before. "You're able to improvise a little bit as well which is good fun and it shows a different way of playing rather than just an orchestra where you play one note after the other. There's more freedom."