A few last words about Banff from friends:

Adam Benjamin’s thoughts (merely an excerpt below…) and request for comment:

…the three years I’ve been at Banff, it’s hard to think of any faculty or participants that I’ve spoken with who didn’t feel that their time in the mountains was an inspiring period of musical growth. Surely the crisp Canadian air and high-quality catering cannot fully explain this phenomenon. What makes the Banff program so successful?

Diverse, Rotating Faculty. Faculty that Works. Emphasis on Performance. Emphasis on Self-Direction. Excellent Facilities. Engaged Administration. Talented, Open-minded, Diverse Students.

Jazz Educators, Students and Administrators: Which of these aspects of the Banff workshop can be applied to your school situation? Which cannot, or should not, and why? Comment below.

Also, Curtis MacDonald enters the matrix:

Envision this: half the musicians interacting live to another team of musicians simultaneously across seriously fast network lines, we used the CAnet4 network, that’s uncompressed audio traveling about 70% the speed of light yielding incredibly low latency. In fact, the latency was so minimal that at a medium tempo, the lag was barely noticeable, it even felt as if it were part of the swing of things:

I know what you’re thinking, you’ve heard of this sorta thing before – it’s true, remote tele-conferencing has been around for awhile, but this is different than protocols like ISDN and SourceConnect, it’s way more simple, not to mention free & open source. It really was unlike any other long distance studio connection I’ve worked with before. Professor Chris Chafe from Stanford University is paving the way for this new new technology, and if you want to try it out with your friends, you can! Give it a shot – it’s called JackTrip and can be easily found on Google Code. A huge shot out to the team at CCRMA and the SoundWire group for getting it as stable as it is today!

To read the whole post and hear the music click the link above.
Thanks, guys!