Course

Performance and curatorship are at the core of the master’s course Jazz & Pop Zwolle: not just when it comes to your own practice, but also regarding the world around you. During this master’s course, you learn to master your instrument, to refine your technical and musical skills, and to seize new opportunities. You discover how to connect with different groups of people, how to optimise collaboration and how to shape your own profession as a musician, giving it durable significance and legitimacy.

This master's course provides a stimulating environment in which you learn to draw up and try out your ideas. Of course, you will be fine-tuning your skills, being on stage a lot, but at the same time you are urged to challenge yourself: by being curious, experimenting, asking questions and conducting research. You are challenged to let go of certainties and seek out your own motivations, and you do so always from a self-reflective point of view. The course helps you to develop not only your talents and skills, but also your vision: the artistic and social workings of your vision, with which you can take the lead in a rapidly changing work field.

Curriculum

The Jazz & Pop master's course consists of an individual route with main subject lessons, a collective programme with master's students Classical Music and a joint module with all the master's students in music. As a master’s student you draw up your own personal study plan. This plan will become the interface through which you give shape and direction to your study activities. The two-year Jazz & Pop programme is flexible, multifaceted, and interdisciplinary. You combine your individual route with joint learning, while focussing on performing and curating in the Performance Lab. Your research is closely connected to the acquisition of practice-based experience.

In the first year, you focus on deepening your knowledge and developing your skills. During the second year you build a portfolio based on your own route and research theme, and you get the opportunity to work with an external coach. The master's is completed by a master proof: a final concert in which the results of your research are incorporated in a creative and playful way, in front of a jury of professionals from a diverse range of fields.

In the individual route you follow your own main subject lessons, immersing yourself within your own discipline, deepening your musical knowledge and instrumental skills. We challenge you to take responsibility for your own study process and development: with the framework of the course as a guideline, you are free to look for creative solutions and to experiment.
Every Tuesday you gain practical experience inside the Performance Lab. The Lab is a joint environment in which you work on stage presence, theatricality, marketing, writing, and concept development together with your fellow master's students from Classical Music. You visit and discuss each other's concerts and projects while learning from and with each other. The programme consists of three or four blocks and is concluded with a series of concerts.
In the context of Performance Lab, (inter)national professionals who left their traces in the field, visit the programme in order to work together on projects and assignments. They inspire you to broaden your view on performing, which can entail so much more than simply making beautiful music. Performance is about connecting with current events, about personality, about communicating with a public and about building new audiences. Inside the Performance Lab, you are encouraged to unite the traditional and the novel, to integrate the known into the yet unknown.
In both the first and second year of the course, a Residency Project is also part of the Performance Lab. In this Residency Project, you learn from and collaborate with a renowned company or a leading band or musician. In '22/'23, this was Tony Roe, who first gave a unique concert at the school with his band Tin Men and the Telephone and then asked the students to develop their own concept as a follow-up. His assignment was: Create a preview of a music performance for the year 2035. The aim is to explore how live music performances can be made future-proof by adapting to recent global developments: how can music performances be made more sustainable (in the broadest sense of the word).
The year before that, the Ragazze Quartet took the students into their interdisciplinary and innovative work practice. Coached by the quartet, the students developed performances that were staged at the SeptemberMe Festival. Previous examples of Artists in Residence include the Nederlands Kamerkoor and Holland Baroque.
In Connecting the Dots,'you'll have the opportunity to collaborate with fellow master's students in music at ArtEZ. Connecting the Dots comprises a project week, various workshops, and the 'Meet the Master' course. Connecting the Dots is all about exchange, collaboration, and connection. It offers you a chance to explore fields beyond your own and work alongside fellow creators who, like you, are honing their craft.
Each year, students decide on the theme and approach for the project week. In the 2022/23 academic year, the theme was 'moving images.' Composer Jacob ter Veldhuis (Jacob TV) served as an inspiring guest lecturer, immersing students in his world of grooving, speech sample-based boombox compositions, vibrant orchestral works, and his reality opera, 'THE NEWS.' Students collaborated in groups, guided by visual artist Donna Verheijden, composer and singer Brechtje van Dijk, improvisation specialist Jasper le Clercq, and dramaturg Cecile Brommer. The project culminated in a performance at the Focus Filmtheater in Arnhem.
Past themes have included collaboration with the 'Sounds of Change' organization, where students delved into their unique working methods, and a project week centered on the theme of 'Mourning,' featuring guest teachers from music therapy, theatre, and design.

Research

In order to prepare for an unknown future, it is crucial to keep developing your knowledge and abilities. Therefore, research is at the core of the master’s course. Integrating research into your own practice allows you to contribute to a whole new language within the field of music. In the first year, you get thoroughly acquainted with research during Performance Lab. During the second year of the master's, you focus on your own research topic.

In this master's course, conducting research is about being able to translate that what you do into a broader context; to be able to reflect on your own path. You can explain the choices you make, and cast a light on the alternatives. The fruits of your research may take on different forms: text, for example, but they may also be a podcast, video or audio work.

Matser's courses in music: three pathways

The master's course Jazz & Pop is located in Zwolle, where the accent is on performing and curating. There are also master's courses in music available in Arnhem: Jazz & Pop and Music Theatre. In Arnhem the focus is more on the development of an interdisciplinary practice through performing and making. The music master’s course in Enschede, The Sound of Innovation, lays extra emphasis on innovation. Whichever pathway you choose, we encourage you to make use of the knowledge and classes within all three cities, developing your own unique graduation profile within the ArtEZ Academy of Music.