[4] York Skinner announced her resignment in May 2024, leaving the organisation along with former artistic director Mark Armstrong.
[6] The band's aims are to provide an opportunity for gifted young musicians from around the UK to perform big band jazz in major concert halls, theatres, and on radio and television, and to make recordings, commission new works from British composers and arrangers, and to introduce a love of jazz to as wide an audience as possible, but especially to schoolchildren.
The honorary vice presidents are Valerie Amos, Baroness Amos, Guy Barker, Lord Coe, Lord Colwyn, Dame Cleo Laine, Kelvin Hopkins, Chi Onwurah, and Martin Taylor.
[8] NYJO's members have included many of the major names in British jazz over the last three decades, including Julian Argüelles, Guy Barker, Chris Biscoe, Richard James Burgess, Paul Edmonds, Teresa Gallagher, Steve Hill, David Wood, Nigel Hitchcock, Carol Kenyon, Dave O'Higgins, Simon Phillips, Gerard Presencer, Brian Priestley, Frank Ricotti, Jamie Talbot, Dave Watts, Tom Cawley, Gareth Lockrane, Rob Luft, Louis Dowdeswell, Callum Au, Chris White,[citation needed] Amy Winehouse,[9] Bobby Worth[10] and Neil Yates.
A new double CD album entitled NYJO FIFTY was released in late 2015 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of NYJO's formation, with guest appearances by alumnus Mark Nightingale and by Zoe Rahman and Julian Siegel, both of whom were commissioned to write new works for the album.