Customer Reviews

Giants of Jazz Piano

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First, meet the reviewer. I'm a proficient rocker that can read music with effort, but I prefer lead sheets. I'm learning jazz now for fun and profit. For me, this book was a real find, especially in the bargain bin. The following established giants are well represented: Bill Evans (my hero, includes A Time For Love, from his Grammy-winning Alone), Art Tatum (the original jazz piano monster), Dave Brubeck (includes famous hits Take Five and Blue Rondo), plus others better known to piano geeks, like George Shearing, Marian McPartland and Duke Ellington (better known as a band leader). The transcriptions appear as accurate as anything available, and most are solo arangements that won't suffer from lack of a bass player (though I spotted one Bill Evans number from a trio arrangement). The difficulty level veers toward intermediate, with some passages and selections that are quite advanced and require more time that I have to master. There are some spots that would probably challenge an accomplished player. I don't think that I'd play many of these arrangements note-for-note in public (the light's bad where I play and I don't plan to memorize them), but there's plenty to learn from here. Great stuff!

This book is really great. It contains complete transcriptions of standards as they were played by famous jazz pianists (Bill Evans, Ellington, Art Tatum, Brubeck). In particular, I loved the versions of 'The Shadow of your smile' (a la J.S.-Bach), and 'Over the Rainbow' (completely reharmonized) by Shearing.

This book can help pianists who don't know jazz and would like to learn it: it gives them an idea of what piano jazz is like (of course, it won't teach them how to improvise).

It can also be of help to jazz pianists, as inspiration for their own improvisations.