Today we had a chance to showcase the songs we’ve been playing in class and our hard work payed off. My wife and best friend were impressed. Okay, jazz smarty pants they are not, but they loved us, thought we […]
All originals, with polyrhythms, mixed meter, modulations and….lets not forget the 4/4 tune. It takes serious concentration and dedication. I am proud of them and I can’t wait to hear them perform the complete set of music at Smalls on […]
It is great to hear how everybody in the group is stepping it up. I am very excited to hear them perform sunday, they worked hard, with as result a beautiful set of music. Smalls, here we come.Sent from my […]
Yesterday in class we ran through everything we will perform for our Smalls gig next Sunday. There was great energy and really nice interaction with the band. Our new alto player Kenji, fits right into the group. I especially enjoyed […]
Last night I started a bi weekly workshop for the New York Jazz Workshop(NYJW)! The NYJW has been working on this project for sometime and we’re all excited to get it up and running. We’ve started with four interested and […]
We sank our teeth in the challenging set of music that we are preparing for the gig. Its not there yet but we made great progress. More work to do, everybody is ready to move in second gear. Looking forward […]
Getting a set of music together and made a little playbook on who solo’s where. And a nice arrangement on Mr. Knight from John Coltrane. We have one more week to clean things up. Looking forward to hear the workshop […]
Today the Bebop to Hard Bop Workshop had Andrea Veneziani subbing for Mark Sherman. We worked on the tunes are going to be played at Smalls. We decided endings and introductions and worked a lot on interplay and the melodies. We also […]
Today the workshop was focused on the 5 tunes that we are going to perform at Smalls, so we tried to simulate the performance, deciding the order of the soloist and the exact arrangement of the tunes. Playing everything without […]
Another great workshop. The two hours literally flew bye. We worked on Rain, a tune writen by Miles Okazaki, and specifically looked at 23232323/222/32233223/22/2323 in triplets, sixteenth and quintuplets. We also checked out a new tune written by Olivia and […]
After a small holiday break we are back on track and getting ready for the performance at smalls on the 29th. We warmed up with sight-singing diads, played through some ii V melodies in all keys, warmed up with the […]
On Saturday the students came back after a two week hiatus for the holidays. We started playing over F blues and worked on transposing the changes from Bb. Everyone soloed over the form along with trading four’s with Luke, our […]
In this first class of 2012 we focused on a nice arrangement of Night in Tunisia by Dizzy Gillespie and rehearse the horn backgrounds under the guitar and piano solos, to be sure that everything sounds good and thigh for […]