Jazz Piano Cafe

I worked a bit on two great jazz standards, Alice in Wonderland and Close Your Eyes. I did this practice by ear, without any chord charts (although I previously saw chord charts for these pieces a long time ago). Check out Marian Mcpartland’s piano jazz interview with Bruce Hornsby for a great version of Close…

This is a really hard tune! (Simone) I find the melody challenging to play because my technique is still not what it once was (and will yet be, I am certain!:)  It’s also so different harmonically from the other tunes that I know in my head. Please click below to listen: simone5.mid

Please click below to listen: simone2.mid

This is a great tune. Taken from Elvin Jones – Coalition (I haven’t heard that CD but I believe I heard Lee Morgan on a CD playing this). Click below to listen: simone.mid

Worked on a Brad Mehldau tune that I tried to remember from a CD, and also played a bunch of standards – Voyage, the Nearness of You, Alice in Wonderland. Please click below to listen: brad-mehldau-tune-and-alice-in-wonderland.mid

I wrote a tune last fall which is my most harmonically advanced as of yet… it’s called Joy and I recorded it in a pretty hasty recording session last weekend (click here to listen). My bass playing friend Jason said that this tune is the most difficult to play of all the tunes I have…

I love practicing because it allows me to take as much time as I want to work out nice ways to play tunes. When playing with a group I am always trying to play in time, and there is less time to be very thoughtful about learning new voicings and ways to play the chords.…

I couldn’t sleep, so I tried to relax my mind by doing some freeform improvisation on the piano. I find that it can sometime have a calming effect to improvise freely on the piano for about 10 minutes, or longer if I feel like it. At the end of this session, I worked a little bit…

I was inspired to work on my jazz chops a bit after attending a wonderful concert given by Amanda Tosoff quartet with Brad Turner at CBC Studio One. So I picked the standard How High the Moon and did some practice on playing a bit faster, trying to get some lines to flow, and my hands…