Don Mayne Trio

Mildura jazz group, the Don Mayne Trio, formed when they were all studying at Uni, but it’s the boys who are the teaches now, bringing their love of jazz to the classroom. “The original trio started together at Uni. We went our separate ways for a few years doing musical projects, but then all ended up in Mildura teaching, so we decided to get the band back together and have been playing for the past three or four years as a trio,” says brassiest Don Mayne.
“I integrate jazz into the curriculum … Luke (drummer) and myself are both classroom teachers, so we incorporate it into our educational settings and talk about the context of jazz in pop music and jazz in classical, as well and how different things come together.”
Mayne has a very unique perspective of how you should see jazz, and it’s one of the reasons that his classrooms embraces the genre that would normally seem outdated to most kids.
“With any students, or anyone really, jazz is a language and when you first learn the language it’s hard to understand what’s going on when you only know a limited number of words, so to speak,” explains Mayne. “Part of that is teaching them how to listen to the language and how to understand the context that what’s being played in jazz is very much what’s being played in pop and in rock.
“Some of them really take it on board and take it on as their own love of music, and occasionally you find in a class that kids or adults really switch on to jazz and really want to listen to it, and that’s exciting to us.”
However, Mayne isn’t interested in turning his students into jazz nuts but just getting them to embrace music as a whole.
“I think kids learning to express themselves in any form of music is great,” says Mayne. “In my class I have students who are into heavy metal. There are some kids who like classical, and some who like folk music. I think the bigger question is how do we get students excited about being expressive?”
The upcoming Mildura Jazz Festival is one such outlet for Mayne’s students to express themselves, with both teaches and students alike performing.
“We get to bring our students along to watch us play and we get to play on stage in our school production,” says Mayne. “The students are able to plug into the festivals and they are able to see their teachers perform and that gives some students a rare opportunity, given the nature of when we perform and where, so they are able to see us perform and that what we preach in class is what we do on stage.”
Mayne will also be hosting Red Hot Jazz, an annual school concert that will this year be joining the Mildura Jazz Festival.
“A few years ago we decided to put something on for Redcliff that they hadn’t had for quite a number of years, so the school decided to put on a concert and we are now doing our third one now,” says Mayne. “It’s nearly a whole year’s discussion now on how to make the festival bigger and better now we have jumped on board with the jazz festival.”
When&Where: Mildura Jazz Festival – October 31 to November 3
By Zach Broadhurst