Today for Music Education Monday, you can get a video lesson from famed drummer Peter Erskine on "Playing Brushes With All Styles Of Music."
First gaining wide attention in the mid-1970s as a member of Stan Kenton's big band, Erskine (pictured) can be heard on more than 600 albums encompassing styles including jazz, funk, rock, pop and more.
He has performed and/or recorded with headliners such as Weather Report, Diana Krall, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan, Steps Ahead, Kate Bush, and many others, and also has released 20 albums as a leader, including two - Dr. Um and Side Man Blue - this year. When not touring or recording, Erskine also teaches at the the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music.
In this video recorded for Drumeo.com, Erskine talks about basic brush techniques, and how to apply them to many different styles of music.
This week for Music Education Monday, you can sit in via video on a master class with the late, great pianist Oscar Peterson(pictured).
One of the most acclaimed and popular jazz pianists of his generation. Peterson, who died at age 72 in 2007, wasknown as a technical master in the tradition of Art Tatum, capable of executing elaborate flights of pianistic fancy while still retaining the essential elements of blues and swing.
He was best known for working in a trio format, most notably with bassist Ray Brown and drummer Ed Thigpen, and later in his career with guitarist Joe Pass and bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen. Peterson also recorded and performed with many of the major jazz musicians active during his lifetime, including St. Louis' own Clark Terry, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Young, Ben Webster, and numerous others.
He gave this presentation in 1997 in Marciac, France, accompanied by Ørsted Pedersen, drummer Martin Drew, and guitarist Ulf Wakenius. The video, shot by an audience member, isn't exactly professional quality, but if you have some interest in the subject matter, it's worth the effort of adjusting the volume control from time to time to hear what Peterson has to say about developing solos, ensemble playing, arranging, and more.
For those who'd like a little more OP, after the jump you can see a bonus video, a 1995 biographical documentary about Peterson titled Music in the Key of Oscar.
This week for Music Education Monday, you can get a little free advice on recording via some videos from producer Steve Albini.
Though he's known for his work with alt-rock and punk acts such as Nirvana, The Pixies, PJ Harvey, and Iggy Pop, the fundamentals of Albini's pragmatic approach to capturing full band performances in the studio on a modest budget can be applied to many musical genres, including jazz.
In the first video below, recorded in 2005 at a convention of readers of Tape Op magazine, Albini (pictured) discusses his preferred way to record drums, which relies less on close-miking and more on room ambiance than the methods employed by many engineers and producers. For more on Albini's drum miking techniques, see this article from Drum magazine.
After the jump, you can see four more videos in which Albini discusses various aspects of audio production. The first, "How to Produce An Album with Steve Albini," features him talking generally about how he approaches the production process when starting a new project.
After that, there are a couple of Q&A sessions with Albini, recorded in conjunction with his participation in a series of seminars called "Mix with the Masters" in 2014 and 2015. Last but not least, there's a shorter clip in which Albini talks about why he personally prefers analog recording to digital.
This week for Music Education Monday, you can check out a video lesson from pianist Don Grusin.
The younger brother of musician, producer, and label owner Dave Grusin, Don Grusin (pictured) has made 17 albums as a leader, and has been heard in hundreds of other recordings, films and TV shows made during the past 40 years, working with jazz musicians and singers including Lee Ritenour, Brenda Russell, Tom Browne, Ernie Watts, Joe Pass, Eric Marienthal, David Benoit, Patti Austin, Harvey Mason, Lorraine Feather, and many more.
In this video lesson, Grusin touches on topics including alternate voicings, blues changes, solo techniques, rhythm patterns, and much more, with some help from fellow musicians including his brother Dave, Ernie Watts on saxophone, bassist Abraham Laboriel, and others.
This week for Music Education Monday, you can check out a couple of master classes with the veteran bassist Abraham Laboriel.
Since graduating from Berklee and beginning his career in the early 1970s, the 69-year-old Laboriel (pictured) has played thousands of sessions, working on TV and film soundtracks and with top names in jazz, rock, pop, and contemporary Christian music including Al Jarreau, George Benson, Andy Summers, Barbra Streisand, Billy Cobham, Dave Grusin, Dolly Parton, Donald Fagen, Elton John, Freddie Hubbard, Herb Alpert, Herbie Hancock, Lalo Schifrin, Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour, Michael Jackson, Paul Simon, Quincy Jones, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, and many others.
The first video, titled "Beginning Funk Bass," was recorded in 1994 and is pretty much what you'd expect from the title, with Laboriel demonstrating various funk grooves and licks and discussing the concepts and techniques used in them.
The second video is from 2014 and captures a relatively informal session, in which Laboriel plays, talks a bit, and takes questions. Although this class was presented originally for an audience made up primarily of church musicians and does feature some discussion specific to that context, many of the bassist's insights nevertheless can be applied to any genre.
This week for Music Education Monday, here's a grab-bag of material of interest to trombonists, including a video in which Robin Eubanks(pictured) talks about "music, jazz, and developing as a musician."
The brother of guitarist Kevin Eubanks and trumpeter Duane Eubanks, Robin Eubanks probably is best known for his work with bassist Dave Holland and as a member of the SFJAZZ Collective, but he's also released nine albums as a bandleader, the most recent of which is 2014's kLassik RocK Vol. 1 with his band Mental Images.
Over the course of more than 30 years in the music business, he's also played with Slide Hampton, Sun Ra, Stevie Wonder, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Elvin Jones, and more. You can see the video of Eubanks in the embedded window at the bottom of this post.
For more tips from working trombonists on video, check out the YouTube series "Bone Masters" on trombonist Paul Nowell's YouTube Channel. Nowell to date has released 46 episodes, most ranging from five to 10 minutes in length and featuring a different guest trombonist.
Another dissertation available in full online, "Teaching and Learning Jazz Trombone" by Ohio State University doctoral candidate Julia Gendrich, has some interesting material for both students and teachers.
A lesson needn't be formal to be valuable, and so in that spirit, today for Music Education Monday here's a video of the veteran saxophonist Jimmy Heath(pictured) answering questions posed by high school students from the Tucson Jazz Institute's ensemble devoted to the music of Duke Ellington.
Posted in May of this year, the footage was shot for Passing the Torch, an upcoming documentary film about Heath by Bret Primack, aka the Jazz Video Guy. (You can find out more about the film, and if you like, contribute to its crowd-funding campaign, here.)
Heath, named an NEA Jazz Master in 2003, is a Philadelphia native and is part of a family of professional musicians that also includes his brothers, the late bassist Percy Heath of the Modern Jazz Quartet, and drummer Albert "Tootie" Heath; and his son, the percussionist and producer James "Mtume" Forman.
He's been involved in jazz education since the 1980s, when he joined the faculty and helped create the jazz program at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College in the City University of New York. And as one of the few surviving musicians from the post-World War II bebop era, he's got a lifetime of fascinating experiences to share with students.
Born in 1926, Heath was rejected by the draft board in WWII for being underweight, and instead began working in the music business. Originally an alto saxophonist, he performed around Philadelphia with the Nat Towles band in 1945 and '46, then formed his own group, which lasted until 1949. Heath's big band included at various times future jazz luminaries such as saxophonists John Coltrane and Benny Golson, trumpeters Cal Massey and Johnny Coles, pianist Ray Bryant, and more, but never released any recordings.
Nicknamed "Little Bird" during this period, Heath switched to tenor saxophone in the late 1940s to try to downplay frequent comparisons with Charlie Parker. As fate would have it, though, he wound up dissolving his own band to work with Parker's most famous collaborator, Dizzy Gillespie, forming a friendship that would last for decades.
Health also played briefly with Miles Davis in 1959 after Coltrane left Davis' band, and over the years has performed with many other well-known jazz musicians including Kenny Dorham, Gil Evans, Milt Jackson, Art Farmer, and more. Contemporary listeners may know him best for his work in the Heath Brothers, a band he formed in 1975 with his brothers and pianist Stanley Cowell that has continued as a working unit into the present day.
You can see Heath's Q&A session with the Tucson students in the embedded video window below. As a bonus, after the jump you can see another video in which Heath drops some wisdom, talking in 2011 to Jazz Times magazine about why the great tenor saxophonist Ben Webster when working up new material always learned the lyrics as well as the music.
This week for Music Education Monday, here's something that will have special meaning for a lot of St. Louis jazz fans: a short video course in how to play the trumpet from Clark Terry.
Terry, who died last year, was a St. Louis native who spent more than 70 years as a working professional trumpet player, and generally is considered one of the greatest jazz musicians ever to come from this area.
Terry (pictured) also was of the first well-known jazz players to recognize the importance of jazz education for high school and college students, and from the 1970s on, he spent a great deal of time teaching and mentoring young musicians in both formal and informal settings.
Beyond that, summarizing his long and distinguished career in a paragraph or two would be a Herculean task, so if for some reason you are not already familiar with Terry's many accomplishments, please check out StLJN's extensive coverage of him over the past decade.
Today's featured material seen in the embedded window below was recorded in 1981 under the auspices of an organization called The Video Classroom, and is titled simply "Trumpet Course: Beginner - Intermediate with Clark Terry."
It includes nine separate mini-lessons totaling nearly 52 minutes of material, in which Terry is supported by the veteran bassist Major Holly and also interacts with fellow trumpeter Marc Chase Weinstein.
While it definitely is geared toward less experienced players - Terry starts with the basics, identifying the parts of the instrument and the function of each - even veteran trumpeters may find a useful tidbit or two, and just about anyone who likes jazz may enjoy an hour spent with Clark Terry talking about music.
The late guitarist Herb Ellis(pictured) was known as a master of blues-inflected mainstream swing, and today for Music Education Monday, you can get a video lesson from him in jazz soloing and comping.
Ellis, who died in 2010, started his career in the 1940s as a big band guitarist, playing with Glen Gray and Jimmy Dorsey, but first gained wide notice as a member of pianist Oscar Peterson's trio from 1953 to 1958.
After that, he spent three years performing with Ella Fitzgerald, and during the 1950s also recorded and/or gigged with many other jazz greats, including saxophonists Ben Webster and Stan Getz, trumpeters Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Eldridge, and Sweets Edison, drummer Buddy Rich, bassist Ray Brown, and more.
In the 1960s, Ellis did studio sessions for film, TV, and commercials, and played in the live bands accompanying television hosts Steve Allen, Merv Griffin and Regis Philbin. He eventually returned to jazz and to touring, notably teaming up with fellow guitarist Joe Pass, and later joining forces with Barney Kessel and Charlie Byrd under the name "The Great Guitars".
In this video, recorded in 1989, Ellis (with some help from Ray Brown on bass, plus rhythm guitarist Terry Holmes) uses a 12-bar blues progression to demonstrate some of his favorite licks, and discusses a variety of topics including tuning, chord formations, scales, comping, melodic ideas, and more.
Today for Music Education Monday, you can get a drum lesson via video from Danny Seraphine, best known as a founding member and the original drummer of the band Chicago.
Although Seraphine (pictured) left the group in 1990, his work on their early albums helped establish them not only as major hit-makers, but also as a band that, at least early in their career, was considered innovative and musically credible by a lot of jazz players and fans.
Although Chicago subsequently wound up squandering much of that reputation by becoming little more than a vehicle for soft-rock tunes by outside songwriters, it doesn't diminish the quality or importance of Seraphine's playing on those early recordings. And as you'll hear, the skills that helped Seraphine earn a place on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "The Top 100 Drummers of All Time" remain undiminished even now.
In the video below, produced by the website Drumeo.com and titled "The Art of Jazz Rock Drumming," Seraphine plays three songs with his current band C.T.A., gives a presentation outlining some his drumming ideas and concepts, and takes questions from the audience. As a bonus, after the jump you can see another master class presented by Seraphine just last month at Bentley's Drum Shop in Fresno, CA.
Today for Music Education Monday, here are some lessons in piano and jazz theory from the veteran pianist Barry Harris, via a series of short videos produced by the Jazz Academy program of Jazz at Lincoln Center in NYC.
The first of these four clips was part of a previous post here with some other piano-related material, but now that the whole series is online, it seemed worth sharing again along with the companion videos.
With regard to Harris, we refer once again to that previous post, which said:
A native of Detroit, Harris (pictured) has run the gamut from swing to bop to modern jazz in his 85 years, performing with major musicians including Sonny Stitt, Illinois Jacquet, Coleman Hawkins, Dexter Gordon, Lee Morgan, Charles McPherson, Max Roach, and many more. He's also been heavily involved in jazz education, giving master classes at colleges and universities all over the world.
These lessons were recorded in September, 2013, and feature Harris talking with fellow pianist Eli Yamin, who helps him discuss and demonstrate various points. You can see a playlist with all four videos in the embedded window below.
For some additional free educational resources about jazz theory, take a look at Jazz Theory, a downloadable book in PDF format written by Stuart Smith, professor emeritus in the department of music at University of Massachusetts Lowell.
When organist Eddie Landsberg was mentioned here a few months back as part of a pairof posts collecting info of interest to beginning B-3 players, it was noted that he's got a YouTube channel that features a number of instructional videos.
Today's installment of Music Education Monday spotlights a couple of those videos, in which Landsberg (pictured) talks through how he develops solo ideas, using the standards "Stella By Starlight" and "Softly as A Morning Sunrise" as examples. While some of the specifics of what he's playing may pertain exclusively to the organ, many of the ideas and concepts being discussed could be applied to any instrument.
As a bonus, after the jump there's a third video, in which Landsberg uses Charlie Parker's "Ornithology" as the delivery vehicle for some tips on how to play bebop melodies and solo lines with bass accompaniment.
If you had a chance to hear guitarist Pat Martino when he performed in St. Louis a couple of weeks ago, you may have wondered how he does what he does.
Today for Music Education Monday, you may get at least a partial answer to that question, as you can see Martino (pictured) explaining some of his concepts and musical ideas via a series of video lessons.
Excerpted from an "interactive video master class" called The Nature of Guitar, the lessons total more than 70 minutes of material spread across 11 individual videos.
The first clip, "A Compositional Journey," is the longest of the set at nearly 25 minutes, followed by segments titled "The Utensil & The Experience," "Seven Primaries: Triangle," "Chromatic Scale: Octavistics," and "'Stairways' & Chromaticism."
Next up is "Parental Forms Revealed," followed by "G7 Improv: Minor Form," "Diminished Parental Form: Dom7," an overview and breakdown of Martino's original "Welcome to a Prayer," and a performance of an improvised blues.
All 11 clips have been compiled into a YouTube playlist, which you can see in the embedded window below.
It's now been a year and a half since StLJN's "Music Education Monday" feature began, spotlighting free music education resources available online.
To help keep the information easily accessible to as many people as possible, here's an index of posts from the last six months. (You can see indices of the first year's worth of posts here and here.)
The series will continue with a new entry next week. In the meantime, here's a chance to catch up with previous posts you may have missed:
This week's Music Education Monday is a sort of case study in big band arranging, presented by pianist Bill Dobbins, professor of jazz studies and contemporary media at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY.
A veteran jazz educator, Dobbins first joined the Eastman faculty in 1973, and played a major role in designing the school's jazz studies program. He currently teaches jazz composing and arranging, gives applied lessons to jazz writing majors, and directs the Eastman Jazz Ensemble and the Eastman Studio Orchestra.
Additionally, and especially relevant given the subject of this post, Dobbins was principal director of the WDR Big Band in Cologne, Germany from 1994 through 2002, working with guest soloists including Clark Terry, David Liebman, Kevin Mahogany, Randy Brecker, Gary Bartz, Kevin Mahogany, Art Farmer, Steve Lacy, Paquito D’Rivera, Mark Feldman, Clare Fischer, Peter Erskine, and more. In 2002, he returned to Eastman, but continues to work as guest director with the WDR Big Band and with the Netherlands Metropole Orchestra.
Presented at the Jazz Education Network's 2015 conference in San Diego, the workshop's official title is "Elegy: the Development of an Original Theme into a Creative Arrangement for Big Band," and, as the name suggests, it's basically a first-person, step-by-step recounting by Dobbins of how he turned his composition "Elegy" into a full-blown arrangement for the WDR Big Band. You can see the workshop via the video in the embedded window below.
Since saxophonist and composer Henry Threadgill recently won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for music for his composition "In for a Penny, In for a Pound," this seems like an opportune Music Education Monday to share with StLJN readers a video master class with him.
Threadgill, 72, is a Chicago native who's been creating innovative music since the 1970s with a variety of ensembles, notably the trio Air with bassist Fred Hopkins and drummer Steve McCall; Very Very Circus; the seven-member Sextett; the Society Situation Dance Band; his current group, Zooid; and several others.
An original member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Threadgill (pictured) also has written music for orchestra, solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and theatre, and has released more than 30 albums as a leader or co-leader.
You can see the master class, recorded in June 2014 at the Creative Music Studio Workshop in Big Indian, NY, in the embedded video window below.
For more about Threadgill and his approach to music, read “A Door to Other Doors,” an extended interview with him originally published in 2011 in the journal Critical Studies in Improvisation; and "The Improvisational Techniques of Henry Threadgill," a analysis with notated examples by saxophonist Richard Savery.
Also, just below the embed of the master class, there's a bonus video featuring an hour-long interview with Threadgill conducted a couple of years ago for the Library Of Congress, in which he discusses his upbringing in Chicago, the AACM, his experience in Vietnam, the music of his groups Air and Zooid, and his approach to composition and improvisation.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA is known as one of the top schools in the country for engineering, math, and science, and as such, they've also been a pioneer in online learning, putting material from many courses on the internet for anyone to access for free.
And while MIT may not be known particularly as a mecca for the arts, they do have some music courses among those online offerings, including the one being spotlighted here today for Music Education Monday, a series of 13 videos recorded in Spring 2013 for the course "Musical Improvisation."
Taught by trumpeter Mark Harvey and saxophonist Tom Hall with some help from MIT students and various guests, the course deals with improvisation more on a conceptual level than in a "here's how to navigate the chord changes" sort of way.
This first video in the series is a lab session "about sonic experimentation, improvising free from judgments of right vs. wrong. It begins with structured improvisation exercises incorporating sound and movement, followed by more exercises with graphic notation."
The series continues with concerts and workshops dealing with an eclectic selection of topics including electronics, improvisation in Indian classical music, and "In A Silent Way," plus demonstrations from musicians including trombonist Robin Eubanks and cellist Eugene Friesen.
All 13 videos are collected in a playlist that will show them in order from the embedded video window at the bottom of this post. You can find more course materials, including supplemental readings and a recommended list of recordings for additional listening, here.
If this piques your interest in some more big-brain content on the subject, read "Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives," an essay by composer, trombonist, electronic musician, Columbia University professor and AACM member George Lewis that appeared originally in the Spring 1996 issue of Black Music Research Journal, a journal published by the Center for Black Music Research - Columbia College Chicago and University of Illinois Press.
This week for Music Education Monday, it's a video master class with saxophonist David Liebman and his band Expansions, who will be in St. Louis to perform for one night only this Saturday, April 23 at Jazz at the Bistro.
Liebman, who's now 69 years old, has played thousands of live dates and made hundreds of recordings over the last 45+ years, leading his own groups and working with notable musicians including Miles Davis, Elvin Jones, Chick Corea, Dave Holland, and many more.
He's also been involved seriously with jazz education for most of his career, giving master classes and workshops at colleges and universities around the world - one of which was showcased right here last September - and writing several books, including Self Portrait Of A Jazz Artist, A Chromatic Approach To Jazz Harmony And Melody, and Developing A Personal Saxophone Sound.
Liebman (pictured) also serves as an artist-in-residence at the Manhattan School of Music in NYC and a guest lecturer at the University of Toronto and Berklee College of Music, and is the founder and artistic director of the International Association of Schools of Jazz, a network of schools in nearly 40 countries.
Expansions is a group of young musicians, including a couple of Liebman's former students, that the saxophonist formed a couple of years ago as a way to get a fresh perspective on music and as another way to pass along some of his knowledge. In addition to Liebman on soprano sax and flute, the group includes Matt Vashlishan (alto sax, clarinet, flutes), Bobby Avey (keyboards), Tony Marino (bass), and Alex Ritz (drums).
In the video below, you can see Liebman and the members of Expansions as they present a master class last October at the University of Louisville School of Music. After an introduction, they alternate short performances with discussions of the material just played, which gives them an opportunity to talk about very specific musical choices and ideas as well as broad concepts and philosophy.
If this video master class whets your appetite, know that you can see Liebman presenting a workshop and performance in person from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, April 23 at Saxquest. Part of an ongoing series of master classes and performances at the shop, the event is free and open to the public.
While the official start of summer is still a couple of months away, it's not too early for aspiring young jazz musicians in the St. Louis area to make plans to enroll in one or more of the jazz camps being presented this year by local universities and organizations. Here are brief summaries of four programs:
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville will hold its annual camp for students at "all levels, grades 8-12" from Tuesday, May 31 through Friday, June 3 on the SIUE campus. Classes are taught by members of the SIUE jazz faculty. For details or to sign up, go to https://www.siue.edu/artsandsciences/music/community/jazz-camp.shtml.
Bassist Jim Widner's big band will serve as the faculty for the annual University of Missouri - St. Louis jazz camp, with instructors including Widner, Mike Vax, Scott Whitfield, Dave Scott, Ken Kehner, Chip McNeill, Kim Richmond, Gary Hobbs, and others. The camp for middle school, high school and college students will be held Sunday, June 5 through Friday, June 10 on the UMSL campus. For more information or to enroll, visit http://gsljazzfest.com/JazzCamp.html.
Webster University's annual camp for "beginning, intermediate and advanced level jazz improvisers and instrumentalists" will take place from Monday, July 11 through Friday, July 15 on the Webster U campus, with instruction from the university's jazz faculty. You can find more information and a signup form at http://www.webster.edu/fine-arts/departments/music/summer-programs/jazz-camp.html.
St. Louis Children's Choirs will present a vocal jazz camp for "singers entering grades 9 – 12 and class of 2016 graduates" on weekdays from Tuesday, July 5 through Friday, July 15.
The camp will be led by Brian Parrish, director of SLCC's Chamber Singers, and held at the choirs' offices at 2842 North Ballas Road in Des Peres. For audition dates and more information, visit http://www.slccsing.org/vocaljazzcamp/.
This week for Music Education Monday, you can sit in on a master class with Airto Moreira, the Brazilian-born percussionist who helped define early 1970s jazz-fusion through his work with Miles Davis and the original lineups of Weather Report and Return to Forever.
Moriera (pictured), who will be 75 years old this year, is married to jazz singer Flora Purim, and their work together recording, performing and co-leading a band has been the main focus of both their careers since the late 1970s.
Apart from Flora, Airto also has worked with many other well-known musicians over the years, including Carlos Santana, Cannonball Adderley, Lee Morgan, Paul Desmond, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette, John McLaughlin, Keith Jarrett, Al Di Meola, Zakir Hussain, and George Duke.
He also has been a contributor to many of Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart's world music percussion albums, played with symphony orchestras and as a solo percussionist, and worked on a number of film and TV soundtracks.
In 1993, Moreira recorded "Rhythms and Colors," an instructional video in which he demonstrates and discusses various Afro-Brazilian and world beat rhythms for drumset and percussion, with some help from his wife on vocals, José Neto on guitar, and Gary Meek on keyboards, saxophone, and flute. Thanks to a pseudonymous user who has uploaded it to YouTube, you can see that video in the embedded window below.
