A new approach

Since my jazz arranging kept me away from the piano for so long, I’ve found myself curiously unmotivated to sit down and play. Oh, I have sat down and played some, for sure, even making a fair go at a few tunes I remain familiar with and just enjoy hearing on occasion. But I have not done anything constructive to improve my playing in probably the last six months.

On a whim, and because it was cheap, I picked up Oscar Peterson Plays the Duke Ellington Songbook CD. And while I thought this was him soloing, it turns out to be two of Oscar’s trios playing twelve songs each. And it is simply wonderful. Now, I’ve had the Oscar Peterson Plays Duke Ellington transcriptions forever, and long since relegated it to the “when I’m concert pianist level, maybe I’ll pull this out” section of my music book library. But taking a look at it again while listening to my new CD yesterday, it didn’t look nearly as foreboding as I remember it. And while it does not appear that the transcriptions in the above-mentioned book are from any of the recordings in the above-mentioned CD, it looks like they might be similar enough that I’ll be able to get something put together by listening to the CD and then sitting at the piano.

At any rate, I’ve decided to take a new approach to learning piano over the summer, namely, I’m going to learn to play a few Ellington tunes in the style of OP. Wish me luck.

More Yoity Tot CD's

Today, I’m up for some additions to the Yoity Tot CD list. To wit:

Night Train by Oscar Peterson. I could easily have put this in the first bunch of CD’s that I posted and I couldn’t tell you why I forgot about it, because by far, this is one of my top five most often played CD’s. I like it because it is up tempo, it has a great variety of songs, and Oscar’s performances are always so reliable and true. Mrs. S loves Hymn to Freedom, but I’m partial to the jazzy little rendition of Volare, which is not covered nearly enough in the jazz pantheon, I reckon.

Time for Tyner by McCoy Tyner. After my experiment, this dropped right into my playing rotation, and I’m pretty sure it went something like five or six days in a row in my car, which would be something like five or six complete play-throughs, before I decided to listen to something else, and only then because I started working on Surrey with the Fringe on Top and I wanted something other than McCoy’s perspective. (Wynton Kelly and Billy Taylor’s versions are just too high to aspire to, for not, so I’m now listening to Mel Torme Swings Shubert Alley’s version, which gives me the words, which helps with my phrasing.) Anyway, McCoy is a solid standby in our dinnertime music rotation, and like Oscar, a favorite of Mrs. S and I both.