Senior Lecturer, New Zealand School of Music, Massey University

"I think if students can formulate their own questions, then in the true jazz tradition, they’ll find their own stuff. I can’t ask for more than that".

Norman is very clear about his approach to teaching. He wants to “help students really understand music and develop their own ideas about it”. The confidence to express their ideas is “the greatest gift I can give them”. Students say they feel “extended, challenged and encouraged to take the material head on, to be critical and to value our own judgement” and are “starting to amaze themselves at the ideas they are coming up with”.

Questions and discussion in classes are “the meat and potatoes of my classes”, says Norman. During the eleven years he has worked in Jazz education, Norman has become increasingly committed to life-long learning, something he wants to encourage for others. Through staff seminars, journal articles, published textbooks, radio interviews and music reviews, he reaches a wide audience in an accessible, user-friendly way. Norman’s commitment was summed up by a colleague who commented on his “genuinely held belief that he has the best job in the world!”