Jazz
About Jazz assessments
We offer a range of assessments for learners playing jazz piano, flute, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn, and trombone. These include Performance Grades and Practical Grades at Grades 1 to 5, Performance Assessment and Ensemble exams.
Jazz Performance Grades - are digital exams available worldwide and on demand.
Jazz exams Practical Grades, Performance Assessment and Ensembles)- are face-to-face exams and only available in Australia, India, Ireland, Singapore and the UK.
Fully written-out piano scores are not currently available for some tunes in the Jazz Horns syllabus. We’ll provide an update when they’re available again.
To find a syllabus, use the instrument selector above. Choose from Jazz Piano, Jazz Flute, Jazz Clarinet, Jazz Sax, Jazz Trumpet or Jazz Trombone.
There are four sections to a Jazz Practical Grade, giving you the opportunity to demonstrate your skills through prepared work and musicianship tests.
- Three tunes – a blues, a standard and a contemporary tune, all including improvisation
- Scales, arpeggios and broken chords – common patterns found in jazz
- Quick study – play at sight or reproduce by ear a short phrase and improvise a response.
- Aural tests – testing all-round aural awareness and musicianship skills
Downloads
Performance Grades for Jazz Piano, Flute, Clarinet, Saxophone, Trumpet and Trombone are available worldwide.
These are digital exams assessed from a video recording by a specialist examiner. There are no booking periods or exam sessions so you can choose when to book, record and submit your exam.
Jazz Performance Grades are available at Grades 1 to 5. They have a strong focus on performance, including:
- interpretation and embellishment of material
- solo and improvisation
- playing with characteristic jazz tonal colour
- sustaining an idiomatic groove in a way that reflects the realities of jazz performance.
For the exam you perform a programme of four pieces. All pieces must be chosen from the syllabus, with at least one from each list: Blues, Standards and Contemporary Jazz. Each piece contains a fully notated head and at least one section for improvisation with a simple chord sequence and set of guideline pitches.
Unlike other Performance Grades, there is no own-choice piece. Choosing pieces from the syllabus ensures that candidates include an element of improvisation in each item of their programme.
Jazz Performance Grades and Jazz Practical Grades have the same repertoire lists and pieces are available in the following books:
- Jazz Piano Pieces (Grades 1 to 5)
- Jazz Tunes (Grades 1 to 3) and The AB Real Book (covering Grades 4 and 5) - for Jazz Flute, Clarinet, Saxophone, Trumpet and Trombone
You can find full details in the qualification specification and syllabuses, available to download on this page. You should also read our Performance Grade guidance which includes important information about recording and submitting your exam video. Follow the link below to find out more.
Downloads
Download PDFs of the Jazz Performance Grades Qualification Specification and the Jazz Piano and Jazz Horns syllabuses.
