Tickets: $10 in advance / $15 day of show. Purchase here “Two of New York’s most original contemporary jazz artists join forces in a memorable and forward-thinking double bill.” Russ Nolan New Latin Quartet featuring Latin Jazz Grammy Nominee Manuel
Read more →by Russ Nolan Using Pentatonics to Connect the Chord Changes The phrase ‘Playing Over the Bar Line’ means starting a melodic/improvised line over one chord change and continuing it over into the next change (or more). It is the opposite of what many beginning improvisers (including myself
Read more →by Russ Nolan (note: if the manuscript is not clear in full-screen mode, you may try to rewind–worked for me– or you can download the .pdf file here: Joel Frahm-Short Rack Solo-Smalls Live ) Short Rack Tenor Solo by Joel Frahm With his permission, I would like to
Read more →by Russ Nolan Jazz Composition and Improvisation: The Melodic Development of Sonny Rollins More Oleo Examples from Part 2:
Read more →by Russ Nolan Jazz Composition and Improvisation: Melodic Development of Sonny Rollins’ Oleo Let’s take Sonny Rollins’ classic, ‘Oleo’ as a musical example. I picked Oleo for two reasons: 1) It is an example of melodic development in itself, and 2) It’s common to just ‘run changes’
Read more →by Russ Nolan Teach Jazz Students to be Relevant Jazz as a Conversation Finally, as important as it is to give beginning improvisers the proper tools to build with, it’s equally important to reinforce the idea that these tools are only the means to the end, not the
Read more →by Russ Nolan Teaching Jazz As A Language: First Words One for the most challenging aspects of learning how to improvise or how to teach improvisation is where to start. Most of us did not grow up listening to Jazz around the house, however, we did grow
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