Practicing

Every week of this year I will learn three jazz standards. As Ethan Iverson says, the repertoire is essentially where you get the knowledge of playing jazz. I am largely following his recommended standards to learn, combining them with Ted Gioia’s recommended recordings from his book “The Jazz Standards”. For anyone interested, I am continually updating this in the form a Spotify playlist. These standards are mostly great music, what is more, they were recorded by some of the greatest jazz musicians so you really can’t go wrong with listening to this. This week I learned “These Foolish Things”, “Autumn in New York” and “Anthropology”.

These Foolish Things is a wonderful simple ballad. Most of these songs live today because of their strong melodies and These Foolish Things is no exception. Also as a bonus, my favorite pianist Thelonious Monk recorded it on a remarkably out-of-tune piano. He plays most of the melody in minor seconds making it as dissonant as possible and it just sounds perfect.

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Autumn in New York is more idiosyncratic and it is the only standard I know that begins in major but ends in minor. Here is the A section of the song:

Although it starts somewhat simple already in the 9th bar a modulation to Ab major begins, quite distant from the home key of F. It keeps going from there to a kind of C minor tonality and then ends in C major! Usually at the ends of A section standards either land on the tonic of the key, which would be F in this case, or it lands on the dominant chord, which would be C7. This song sort of ends on a C major as a tonic chord instead and then it becomes a dominant, but just a bar before the tonality was C minor, very ambiguous and ingenious writing by Vernon Duke. This is just the A section, and as I mentioned the song ends in F minor providing a sort of melancholic afterthought to the song. All this being said, fancy modulations are not difficult to write, just writing some major chords in a random order will do it. What is more interesting is how to make the modulations fit into the larger picture of the song, making it sound natural and organic in the process. I would guess that if you are not used to listening analytically to music this song will just sound nice and beautiful. That is a mark of mastery.

Listening

My listening is often related to the music I am learning and this week I have mostly been listening to recordings of the standards I’ve been learning. Highlights include Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s recording of Autumn in New York and Dexter Gordon’s. My approach to learning these standards is to first and foremost listen to recordings of either Ella, Frank Sinatra, or Nat King Cole. The reason is that they usually interpret the melodies quite close to what is their original shape. My favourite of the bunch is Ella it seems she could only produce perfection.

Reading

I usually start my day by reading and drinking coffee. This week I have been continuing my path through “Israel” by Martin Gilbert. Of course, I am influenced by recent events, and as often is the case, reading one good history book will make you understand current events better than listening to news 24-7. The story of how Israel was created is incredibly fascinating and inspiring. A persecuted people who managed to overcome obstacle after obstacle and created one of the most successful countries in the world. Here is a snippet from the book that for me illustrates the courage and heroism of these pioneers. The section is about an operation led by Yitzhak Rabin after WWII in mandatory Palestine. They had received information that the British intended to deport 200 ‘illegal’ immigrants who were being held in a detention camp. The plan was to sneak them out during the night and hide them in Jewish settlements.

I began to muster the hundred or so survivors whose fate was now in my hands and moved off with about sixty soldiers from various platoons. We made slow progress scaling the Carmel, and I ordered the troops to carry the children on their shoulders. I picked a child up myself. It was an odd feeling, to carry a terrified Jewish child—a child of the Holocaust—who was now paralysed with fear. As my shoulders bore the hopes of the Jewish people, I suddenly felt a warm, damp sensation down my back. Under the circumstances, I could hardly halt.

Gilbert, Martin. Israel: A History (p. 131). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

This picture of soldiers carrying frightened children on their backs stuck with me. They were and still are true heroes.

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