From the category archives:

Jazz Piano

What Is This Thing Called Love? (It’s definitely not recording a CD.)

by Rachel on December 3, 2009

I recently sent in a self-recording for an All-California Jazz Band audition (check it out at CBDA.org) — it was the first time I’d ever done a recording for anything to do with jazz. Like any good musician, I waited until the weekend before the audition tapes were due to begin recording — because recording [...]

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Hanging out with Gordon Goodwin

by Rachel on November 9, 2009

For Gordon Goodwin, it was probably just another solo. But for me, I couldn’t fully grasp it — I was sitting on the same bench as him, watching him improvise on the keys of the old upright Yamaha that I play every morning. I was balancing myself on the edge of the bench so I [...]

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Bill Evans

by Rachel on July 29, 2009

It’s pretty difficult to describe who Bill Evans is.
Yes, he’s a jazz pianist from the twentieth century; and yes, he’s arguably one of the most influential jazz pianists in the history of jazz itself. But his story is probably one of the most tragic ones despite his success in music.
As you can tell in any [...]

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Reincarnation?

by Rachel on July 17, 2009

I was flipping through Downbeat today (the 75th anniversary collector’s edition; seriously, I’m going to keep this thing forever) and I read this short blurb about Toshiko Akiyoshi, a female jazz pianist from Japan (Toshiko: Japan’s First Gift to U.S. Jazz). In a nutshell, Akiyoshi’s pretty amazing – in 1952, Oscar Peterson discovered her playing [...]

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Monk!

by Rachel on July 15, 2009

If I were stranded on a desert island and I could only take one jazz pianist with me, it’d be Thelonious Monk.
Why? It’s all in his sound. When you hear him on the radio, you know it’s him. Unlike Leonard Bernstein or Emanuel Ax, Monk had unusually small hands for a pianist (a problem that [...]

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