Bebop Business School

An American jazz bassist says the process of creating music can inspire businesses to hit high notes. Michael Gold, the Minneapolis-based founder of Jazz Impact, a program that teaches those more comfortable with spreadsheets than syncopation how to improvise, has become the pied piper of an emerging trend that introduces the arts to the corporate boardroom.

“My audience isn’t there for a music lesson,” says Gold, who will lead a jazz trio at the Banff Centre on August 20 during a free concert/workshop. “The issues I raise are critical to the survival of business in the 21st century.” Together with pianist Larry Ham and drummer Jerome Jennings, Gold will start out by playing standards from a repertoire that covers rich territory with nods to such jazz greats as Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington.

Along the way, the trio introduces the tenets of the Jazz Impact program summed up with the acronym APRIL: Autonomy, Passion, Risk, Innovation and Listening. And when the groove is right, Gold sometimes even encourages members of the audience to join in by picking up specially designed xylophones that, he says, “won’t play wrong notes.”

For the skeptics in the crowd who doubt jazz can teach much about business success, Gold, a former vice-president of a large financial services company, retorts, “In art, in jazz and in business equally, it’s what we don’t know that is the most important thing.” – Wes Lafortune

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