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Jazz - Sonny Rollins Alfie's Theme - On Tenor/treble E C


Loikroh

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After quite a lot of Bach has been posted I thought I'd start the year at the other end of the spectrum.

 

This is one of my favourite jazz numbers and so much fun to play. I enjoy the classical playing but there's something about playing jazz when you get the nod and you've got the next three choruses all to yourself. I have incorporated just a couple of tune snippets in the impro. Most jazz musicians like doing it - Dexter Gordon was the king of this I reckon.

 

https://soundcloud.com/mart-bradley/alfies-theme-sonny-rollins-concertina

 

Played on Wheatstone 26234

 

Happy New Year

Mart

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I reckon Coltrane's Giant Steps would be amazing on concertina but I'm not sure I have the technical chops to do it.

Hi Stuart Glad you like Alfie's - yep,Giant Steps would be a challenge! Like most jazz tunes the head's not too bad to play, even over the 1st line chord progression: Bmaj7 D7 Gmaj7 Bb7 Ebmaj7. A bit unusual! It's just the impro that's almost impossible unless one happens to be a genius like Coltrane - sadly I'm not :D

 

The solo is transcribed here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kotK9FNEYU

 

It makes an interesting workout for the fingers to just stop it at random and try to play a few bars - argghh!

 

cheers

Mart

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Yes, it's a pig, and a constant subject of debate among jazzers as to whether it's in B or E flat. (I favour E flat as all the chords leading up to it are chained - albeit modified - II - V - Is) And you're right, maintaining any kind of intelligent melodic line over those chord changes is supremely hard at speed on any instrument -- I used to play it both on piano and on tuba (!) but that was in a former life when I practised difficult things a lot more.

 

Some of the other tunes on that LP might be less of a stretch -- Naima, perhaps, or Mr. P.C. for a nice blues?

 

And there's always his version of My Favo(u)rite Things...

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Thanks Steve - hopefully more to come as soon as I get some recording time.

I got a great response to this on Facebook from my mates in Pambula Beach. They're playing some great music over there.

Have a look here - https://pbgb.bandcamp.com/album/the-pbgb-jukebox. I'd love to join them at the Merimbula Jazz fest - if only.....

cheers and beers

Mart

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Sweet indeed. Reminds me again that free-reed instruments to my taste are most expressive and beautiful as melody instruments. Yes, more concertina melodic jazz would be great . . .

 

There is a neat short clip of Wim Wakker doing "Cat on the Prowl" as Sound File 2 of the EC samples on the Concertinas page for bandoneon/concertina maker Harry Geuns---

 

http://bandoneon-maker.com/concertinas/

 

 

This bandoneon recording of Thelonius Monk stuff, "Bando Monk," is another wonderful project . . . a favorite of mine . . .

 

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/manoury

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This bandoneon recording of Thelonius Monk stuff, "Bando Monk," is another wonderful project . . . a favorite of mine . . .

 

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/manoury

Hi Ceemonster - glad you like it.

Olivier Manoury is a real star on both Bandoneon and Accordina. I especially like his version of Round Midnight on the Bando Monk album.

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Yes, Manoury is wonderful, another unisonoric concertina player--his bando is the unisonoric "chromatic" bandoneon. He has also done a recording of non-modernist, old-school dance-hall tango classics that is another of my favorites . . .

 

The "Anglo International" anthology CD set includes a cut of Niall Vallely playing Monk's "Round Midnight" on Anglo concertina. It too is lovely . . . He also laid out a lot of beautiful melodic jazzy lines on his recording "Buille."

Edited by ceemonster
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Reminds me again that free-reed instruments to my taste are most expressive and beautiful as melody instruments.

Hi Ceemonster,

 

I agree that playing just the melody (be it solo or with accompaniment from fellow musicians) can be very satisfying (and subtle too) with smaller free-reed instruments as there are lots of chances and approaches for modulation (as I found out very recently with an unaccompanied solo JSB piece myself, where my own satisfaction - quite a rare thing to me re recordings of my own playing - is even growing with repeated listening).

 

OTOH I don't find this true when it comes to folk music in general and dance music in particular. To my belief any concertina system is capable of forceful rhythmic accompaniment and punch), and fully harmonised Jazz standards can be a thing of beauty too when played with the concertina, can't they?

 

However, my own recent experience and the playing of Mart here but prominently including this older one from his side as well have widened my view resulting in sort of an overlapping with your well-known ceterum censeo, and I found it appropriate to mention that here.

 

Best wishes - Wolf

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Hi Wolf

I agree with all you have said here. When I'm playing jazz I'm using the EC very much as a solo instrument rather like the jazz sax or the flute. It's very difficult to bend the notes as those instruments can - possible at a slow speed using very strong bellows and the button hardly depressed -so I tend to grace instead. The EC is perfect for this kind of playing - especially the improvisation - many of the chordal arpeggios run up just one side of the instrument and the chromatic runs are not too difficult to find. Down to practice like everything else I guess. If I'm accompanying a song I tend to use far more chords than single note runs.

 

I see you have provided a link to the Handel sonata. Again this is the EC purely as a classical solo instrument. It's one of the few things I recorded a long time ago that I still really like! I remember reading somewhere - could have been an old "Free Reed" magazine - that Wheatstone envisaged his invention as a "serious" classical instrument. This was one of my early attempts to prove he was right. I was amazed when it was favourably reviewed on the classical music page of the Guardian newspaper!

 

cheers

Mart

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