The Path to Jazz Improvisation

SKU: MB.31060M

ISBN 9781513468051. 8.75x11.75 inches.

As aspiring fingerpicking guitarists started expanding their horizons from folk, blues, and ragtime in the 1970s, it was only logical to look towards early jazz tunes as a vast source for new possibilities. For one thing, they could follow the same evolutionary path from ragtime to jazz that had been taken by pianists such as Jelly Roll Morton and Harlem stride players like James P. Johnson and Fats Waller. These musicians all composed in a variety of styles, but their most ambitious piano solos expanded on the classic ragtime format developed by the likes of Scott Joplin, James Scott, and Joseph Lamb, using several strains that usually changed keys at least once. Morton, the self-proclaimed inventor of jazz, would record versions of tunes like King Porter Stomp and The Original Jelly Roll Blues that are similar to straight ragtime performances, and others where there is lots of room left for embellishment and jazz improvisation.

The present collection is a bonanza for guitarists who want to tackle advanced arrangements along the lines of ragtime but featuring jazz age harmonies from the playing of Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, WC Handy, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and other early jazz legends. The 32 arrangements included are by a wide assortment of guitarists including Ernie Hawkins, Pat Donohue, Lasse Johansson, Duck Baker, Ton Van Bergeyk, Sandy Shalk, Steve McWilliam, and Dorian Henry.

Titles include: Oh, You Beautiful Doll, I’ve Got The Blues, High Society, St. Louis Blues, Davenport Blues, Poor Butterfly, Dixie Jass Band One-Step, Memphis Blues, Big Foot Ham, Grandpa’s Spells, The Original Jelly Roll Blues, Midnight Mama, Milenberg Joys, Fizz Water, Back Home in Indiana, Sweet Georgia Brown, Red Wing (An Indian Intermezzo), There’ll Be Some Changes Made, Way Down Yonder In New Orleans, Charleston, Where The Morning Glories Grow, Limehouse Blues, Susie (of the Islands), I Need Some Pettin’, Weather Bird, Cornet Chop Suey, Kansas City Stomps, King Porter Stomp, Jubilee Stomp, Take It Easy, If I Had You, Moonlight Serenade

SKU: PR.144407290

ISBN 9781491135150. UPC: 680160687008.

Jazz luminary Ali Ryerson traces a unique and personal artistic path in this solo work. With an engaging form reminiscent of jazz charts (a dreamy introduction, a catchy, swinging head, and improvisatory-feeling 12-bar choruses), Ryerson’s music pays deeply-felt homage to Charlie Parker and other jazz greats, while maintaining an organic connection to the lineage of unaccompanied woodwind music in the classical tradition. Classical players will gain insight into jazz harmony, rhythm, and expression as they learn this knockout recital piece, while Ryerson fans in the jazz world gain an image of her musical mind in this fully-notated composition.
Jazz Dream, a jazz-inspired solo flute piece, was commissioned by Claudia Anderson for her Glass Ceilings project. Claudia once told me that playing jazz flute has been one of her musical ambitions. I daresay her performance of JD could very well break a glass ceiling of her own!Moved by the events of 2020, composing Jazz Dream became my way of honoring my musical heroes from the Black community, namely the jazz musicians who created this music and truly broke glass ceilings. As jazz shares its origins with the blues, both genres having originated in the African-American community, I decided on a 12-bar blues form as the framework for the piece.The opening theme gently draws us into a dream-like state, with a melody in slow motion and lines that linger. When the REM cycle kicks into gear, there’s an abrupt rhythmic shift that leads straight into a swingin’ blues. Idiomatic jazz rhythms abound, with blue notes galore – the tension notes that virtually define the sound of both the blues and jazz (i.e. the flatted third, fifth, and seventh notes of a scale in place of the expected major intervals).After several groovin’ choruses of a 12-bar blues in B(, often played as if the soloist is improvising, the blues modulates to the key of E(, and as a tribute to the great Charlie Parker (AKA Bird), I harmonically suggest the more complex set of bebop changes that Parker introduced in his composition, Blues for Alice. Often referred to as Bird Changes or Bird Blues, instead of the basic I - IV – V chord progression commonly used in the blues, Parker used a series of sequential ii-V progressions (and secondary ii-V progressions). With the addition of some tritone substitutions, a chromatically descending bass line deftly replaces the original I-IV-V root movement. This is the harmonic background I was hearing as I wrote this particular chorus.After my 12-bar nod to Bird’s changes, the introductory dream theme returns, now in tempo and with a straight-ahead swing feel. Variations on this theme follow, again to be played as if improvising, with the soloist once again bringing their own personality into the performance. This section builds to a climax, the music pauses, then modulates to C, with a return to the original blues theme. The energy and groove increase through the final flourish, where a blues line ends on the idiomatic flatted fifth.