Stu­dents at­tend­ing Sum­mer Holis­tic Jazz Work­shop 2009 had quite a mouth­ful to say about their ex­pe­ri­ence. Vo­cal­ist Bruce Greenidge and pi­anist/Rap­so artiste Lese­di Fe­lix ex­pressed them­selves in the fol­low­ing man­ner:

Bruce Greenidge (Vo­cal­ist):

"I learned so much and now have a greater ap­pre­ci­a­tion for jazz and oth­er forms of mu­sic, even though I've been singing for more than 20 years. The cal­i­bre of guest lec­tur­ers and per­form­ers was of the high­est, with per­sons such as Clive Zan­da, Hol­lis Liv­er­pool, Leroy Clarke, Ann Fridal, Ar­turo Tap­pin and Eti­enne Charles, just to name a few. "The holis­tic and di­verse na­ture of the work­shop is cer­tain­ly worth men­tion­ing. In ad­di­tion to jazz, oth­er as­pects were spir­i­tu­al/gospel, ca­lyp­so, blues, opera, art and po­et­ry, eti­quette, steel pan and movies of the jazz mas­ters. "The Com­mon Wealth of Sounds con­cert was fan­tas­tic, pro­vid­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to hear some of the re­gion's best jazz per­form­ers. The work­shop was tru­ly a won­der­ful lis­ten­ing, learn­ing and play­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. "My on­ly re­gret was that I had to miss some of the ses­sions and that more peo­ple did not at­tend what I con­sid­er a world-class jazz work­shop."

Lese­di Fe­lix (Pi­anist/Rap­so artiste):

"This Work­shop was not on­ly for me, but for any mu­si­cian who is com­mit­ted to mu­sic as a ca­reer. I am now en­light­ened to the fact that Jazz is the ul­ti­mate mu­si­cal art form. This pro­gramme was well put to­geth­er and ef­fec­tive­ly struc­tured. The wealth of in­for­ma­tion I have gained from this work­shop will un­doubt­ed­ly car­ry me a long way. "I've learnt prop­er im­pro­vi­sa­tion tech­niques, new scale ex­er­cis­es, new scales, wider knowl­edge of chords, how to build chord ex­ten­sions, how, where and when to utilise chords, the im­por­tance of breath­ing, vo­cal ex­er­cis­es, his­to­ry and the list goes on. "Ad­di­tion­al­ly, I learned more about the 12-bar blues, gospel, spir­i­tu­als, clas­si­cal,�opera–and I can now see the link be­tween vo­cal ex­er­cis­es and play­ing scales–art and mu­sic, ten­sion and re­lease. "Words can't ex­press how this work­shop has lift­ed me pro­fes­sion­al­ly as a pi­anist. Thanks to Sean Thomas, the Jazz Al­liance of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the lec­tur­ers, the stu­dents and all who made this work­shop a suc­cess."