Free Jazz Education and Music
While rummaging through my attic, I stumbled upon a treasure: a cassette tape containing practice sessions recorded during my time at Berklee around 1987 or 1988, when I was about 20 years old. The tape captures a series of short
This recent CD is my first standards album. As jazz musicians we arguably spend most of our time improvising over the jazz cannon; old show tunes and jazz pieces written by our mentors and heroes. This album is a collection
Here’s a short tune of mine I recorded on Aug 3rd 2022. It based on an augmented major 7 melody. I wrote the melody from those four notes and harmonized it afterwards. Jeff Harshbarger plays bass and John Kizilarmut plays
Here’s a transcription of my tenor sax solo from the Alliance album (2020). This is over the chord changes to Woody and You (Dizzy Gillespie) on a contrafact I wrote called Woods. In the transcription I tried to notate what
This second track from the album “Ring” is dedicated to Rosa Luxemburg (1871 – 1919). Here are a few quotes from her speeches and writings that I found inspiring. “Only to the rude ear of one who is quite indifferent
Alto saxophonist Andy Ehling and I finished recording our 3rd album and are releasing the tracks one at a time over social media. We are joined by the same ensemble from the Reunion album; Leonard Thompson on piano, Brad Williams
I find that composing is a great way to spend time alone and to work out ideas that you may also use when you improvise. Original tunes also give you something to record and play with other people while contributing
Working on triads is something I do frequently as I find it good for my ears, my mind, my technique and my basic understanding of one of the fundamental structures found in both melody and harmony. Strong melodies and voicings
In this video I’m working on the modes of C harmonic minor. I play up and down the 7 scales or modes and I play up and down the 7th chord for each of the modes. The modes and their
The second volume of Modern Jazz Vocabulary is finally done. I made some changes in the books format based on a lot of the feedback I got from people about vol. 1. This book is bigger in size but should
This is exercise works as a supplement to my book “Jazz Vocabulary Vol. 1 Harmonic Major” or on its own. There are three mp3s for this scale practice below, one at 40bpm, one at 80 bpm and one at 160bpm.
