Urmondian Werner Janssen developed a teaching method to learn to play jazz, to improvise. A method that he himself compares with learning a language: “What I teach people is to be able to make you understandable with just a few words.”
Janssen lives and works in Amsterdam. He plays as a freelance musician for, among others, the Metropole Orchestra and he teaches. Janssen grew up in Urmond, where his love for music started at the age of five, he tells in L1 Cultuurcafe: “Dad came home one day with an elongated suitcase. And in that suitcase was an instrument. A soprano sax. I immediately got one. good sound and I was fascinated that I could hear different notes when I pressed other valves with my fingers. Ever since that day I have been captivated by the magic of music.”
Math
Janssen joined the local fanfare Sint Martinus, where he played flugelhorn. At the age of eleven, he switched to saxophone, but despite his love for music he did not go to the conservatory in the first place: “I went to study mathematics. Yes, with music you have to see that you can earn money with it. I graduated as a mathematician, I worked one blue Monday at Fokker at Schiphol. But I noticed very quickly that this isn’t going to be him. And then I went to study at the conservatory.”
Janssen went to the conservatory in Hilversum to study jazz. “Jazz was really all for me. Always has. Where others dreamed about Michael Jackson in their teenage room, I always secretly listened to the radio on Monday evenings. Then you had the Swing Time program, which was always delicious. Those were my heroes. “
Teaching method
Janssen graduated in 2000. Besides making music himself, he also teaches, for example in improvisation. Together with trumpeter Ruud Breuls, with whom Janssen grew up in Urmond, he wrote a teaching method during corona time: “My philosophy is; if you want to learn to play jazz, if you want to improvise, you have to imitate other people. the same as learning to speak, you imitate your parents. With improvisation you imitate your musical parents. You have to learn to speak on your instrument.”
Charlie Parker
The jazz language that Janssen wants his students to speak is bepop, a style that was ‘invented’ by Charlie Parker around 1940. Janssen: “Five chords, ten scales, that’s all. If you mix that up you get the best solos. What I actually teach people is to be able to make themselves understood with a few words. the best there is!”