We’re now over 600 members in the Jazz Violin Academy SKOOL community. A number of us already play together online in real time — and it’s a great experience. The SKOOL classroom https://www.skool.com/jazz-violin-academy/classroom/dcc47c27?md=e001871bfafa4d16bd50795eefee79c8 shows only a small part of what’s happening. We run many more sessions, and it’s easy to organize one: two or three people agree on a date, and we play. The repertoire is your choice: gypsy, mainstream, or any jazz style you like. If you want to join or start a session, just let us know.

This time we welcomed @Francoise Vernaton among us with an interesting minimalist setup that works fine for Mac computer users. Just plug the headphones into the computer and play via the internal microphone.

Hello Everyone, I want to be completely honest with you about something that's been on my mind. Guillaume Latil had to cancel his upcoming guest class — partly for personal reasons, but also because only 3 students were present at his first session. That's not enough for a guest artist of his level to feel it's worth showing up, and I completely understand his decision. But it's made me stop and think more broadly. Attendance at live classes — including my own — has dropped significantly over the past months. More and more of you are watching replays instead, and I've seen the same pattern with Mathilde's classes. I get it, life is busy. But if this academy becomes primarily a replay library, something important is lost — the interaction, the energy, the feeling of learning together in real time. That's what I built this for, and it's what I want to protect. So I'm taking a step back and rethinking how this all works. Here's what's changing for now:Live classes continue every Monday and Tuesday — with me, Ann, and Mathilde alternating on the days I'm not teaching. I'll keep giving you 4 classes a month as usual. I'm pausing guest artists for now until attendance picks up — it's not fair to invite someone and have only a handful of people show up. I'll be testing this new rhythm over the coming months before making any bigger decisions. And I need your help: if you have thoughts on what would make you more likely to join live — timing, format, anything — please leave a comment below. Every answer matters. I'm currently in Switzerland for the second Manouche Sessions of the year — more on that soon! 🎶 See you in class,Eva

Every year, Dario Napoli organizes a gypsy jazz camp in Italy by the middle of June known as UTTS (Under The Tuscan Sun) where @Eva Slongo was teaching jazz violin for several years. 2026, at the 11th edition, we were only 4 violin players, this time with Roland Tillmanns, Phoebe Forsey, an English Lady and myself. This year the violin teacher was Christiaan van Hemert. I understood from 4 days of morning lessons that his approach to jazz violin improvisation involves: - Simplification of the chord changes (2-5-1 becomes 5-1, dominant chain, Christopher...)  - Constant awareness of these changes, “seeing” chord symbols in his mind's eyes rather than hearing them. Singing is not his preference.  - Chord symbols trigger automatized arpeggios and scales with or without permutations and approach tones (playing “dirty”).  - Hardly any licks at all  - Only the meta level (the big picture how to navigate the changes) remains conscious  - His practice strategy focusses on a tool he calls "Creative rerun" to develop vocabulary consisting in connecting automatized scales and arpeggios following the changes