Arrangement on all Blues

Yesterday in the Standards Class the students came up with an arrangement 
on "All Blues." It was great to hear all the ideas and then make a decision on  a cool intro and ending. I hope to do more of that with this class. We also started working in the beautiful tune by Duke Ellington called "In a Sentimental Mood". We talked about using the harmonic minor scale on the A sections when soloing and incorporating the melody into individual solos. 
The band talked about meeting at Marco's open jam on Wednesday. Also, Ted mentioned that Brad Meldau is at the Vanguard the first week of January. What a treat.

Maryann and Luke

Today 12/10/2011 we worked on playing "Blue Monk" and implemented playing on some different changes underneath the solos.

On Miles Davis's "All Blues" we added the vamp up front and worked on playing the tag ending three times.

Blue Monk performed by Maryann's class

Bruce

Luke

Marco on his way to the class

Maryann and Bruce

Paul

Ted

As a group we talked about ballads to learn for the next class and decided on "In a Sentimental Mood" by Duke Ellington. Everyone got to practice playing over II V I's in the keys of G, F and Eb. This will help when playing "How High the Moon."

Welcome to the blog of the New York Jazz Workshop's Jazz Standards class lead by Maryann McSweeney.