Toronto's Royal Conservatory of Music, courtesy of Snuffy at Flickr

It’s a fact that making music in groups releasing oxytocin in the brain. That’s the same neurotransmitter that’s responsible for the female orgasm, trust, love and host of other good things.  Music makes us co-ordinated, it makes us happy, it fends off weariness when we work and when we work out. Just listen to these Ghanian postal workers getting through their shift;  sounds pretty good to me.

My brother is a dedicated jammer. In his 25 years he’s progressed from drums, to guitar, to bass, to mandolin. I used to love going to shows he’d play with his friends when we were teenagers, and the house parties he threw in Peterborough where people would get drunk, instruments would appear, and everyone would just start singing and banging up a storm together. It caught me completely off guard, all this energy and creativity and joy from a bunch of otherwise subdued and scruffy guys.

Jamming - My brother's birthday in Peterborough, 2006

Mitch Wong, a 22-year old jazz musician, music teacher, and u of t poli-sci grad, hails from the opposite end of the musical spectrum. Growing up in a refined neighbourhood of midtown Toronto, Mitch spent years of rigorous study in the Royal Conservatory program; hours of solitary practice, learning scales and arpeggios, becoming fluent in the language of music.

Despite the formal training and self-discipline, there’s no question when you speak with Mitch that playing with other musicians, that the creative and expressive side of his medium, is where the life of it all is for him too. It gives him that same rush my brother and his pals experience when they play together, despite the superficial differences of what they’re doing. When Mitch was a teenager, he played in the Juno-nominated band Down With Webster. He also taught music himself, into University and beyond.

Inside Toronto's new Royal Conservatory of Music, photo courtesay of RCM

While Mitch values the education he’s gotten and enjoys his musical fluency, he knows its not for everybody. That’s why he’s now working to develop a music program that caters to what he sees as the most universal and important part of music education – jamming.

Who at one point hasn’t wished they could be in a band? Does anything sound like more fun than expressing yourself in a way that makes people laugh and dance, collaborating with your friends? Or even strangers?

You don’t need to go to the Royal Conservatory, or ever have had to strum a guitar to relate to this, he says.

Accessing music in our daily lives isn’t so easy though. The West has refined and confined the way we express and share our music; commercialized and compartmentalized it. While I can download and enjoy masterful compositions from the convenience of my home for pennies, or go out on the town and see a great live show, its harder to access it in the grass-rootsy kinda way. When I see someone walking down Pape avenue singing (not uncommon), I cross the street. And when I walk down Pape avenue singing, (also not uncommon) I make sure there’s no one in earshot.

The dilemma for kids taking concert band programs in school is similar. They’re given their pick of classical woodwind and percussion instruments, and embark on the long ardorous task of mastering their scales and arpeggios. But not everybody is shooting to join the TSO. So  maybe we’re actually just shooting ourselves in the foot by keeping musical education on such a formal track. Maybe there could still be some kind of musical social hour for the kids who opt out of the band program.

Mitch assures me that improvising and jamming on jazz instruments – like the trumpet, the clarinet, the piano, the sax – is a pretty straight-forward procedure. Anyone can learn the scale, pick a note or two and then get funky with rythm. As you get comfortable, branch out. Trust your instincts, he says and you’ll find its easier to produce a good sound than you thought.

He’s been putting this theory to work all year, piloting a program in three Toronto private schools called “Music As a Second Langugae.” His progress so far is the topic of a multiplatform project I carried out this month, which you can find featured on The Toronto Observer.

To really get a sense of what inspires Mitch, take a listen to the added audio clip at the end, complete with the sounds of one of his pilot classes in action at De La Salle College. Mitch’s program will be available to the public in September, in a studio in that aforementioned classy midtown Toronto. For more information on the program, look here.