What Time Is It?

We pianists can be solitary creatures at times. After all, sitting down at our piano and practicing a new technique doesn’t require much interaction with our fellow human beings. Instead, it provides us with a (daily) opportunity to spent some “quality” time with ourselves in an incredibly stimulating and rejuvenating way. Wonderful things begin to … Read More

I’m honored to be included in an excellent podcast by Larry Saidman called Discovering Jazz. Larry is passionate when sharing his knowledge and insight about jazz with others, and we share many common goals with our online musical activities. He’s been a big supporter of my Journey Through The Real Book video series on YouTube … Read More

A funny thing happened on the way to The Kennedy Center… One of my Skype piano students, Phil, had been studying transcriptions of the great jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal, and for months now has been excitedly looking forward to hearing the master play a concert at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. (Phil lives in … Read More

What’s your next step? This is perhaps the most important question for each of us, at any given moment. It’s also one of the most difficult to answer, simply because of what we don’t know. After all, it’s usually easier for someone “who’s been there” to see our true potential, and also for them to … Read More

Hey everyone! I was going to title this newsletter “A fresh take on New Year’s Resolutions,” and then I realized that January 1st already feels like ancient history! So I dug a little deeper and discovered that the question “behind” our New Year’s Resolutions is actually: “What do we really wish for ourselves?” The main … Read More

As we move through time, further and further away from the historical source of jazz, things tend to become codified. Everyone learns the same A and B chord voicings, everyone develops the same rhythmic feel because everyone jams with the same playalong recordings, and everyone follows the same method books. Part of this is perhaps … Read More

How do you practice piano? I’m asking this because most people don’t practice piano correctly. And I’m using the term “correctly” in the best sense of the term. Not in the sense of having one set “correct” way to practice, but simply in the sense of enjoying ourselves, feeding our musical souls, and becoming better … Read More

I used to read a lot of biographies, of all kinds of people. In a biography of the British actor Sir Laurence Olivier, there was one thing that made a big impression on me: While filming a movie or rehearsing for a play, Olivier would always take the time to help another actor learn their … Read More

Did you see the Grammy Awards on TV? There was a lot of piano this year! For starters, the pianist Alicia Keys hosted again and she didn’t waste any time getting to the keyboard, improvising some nice underscoring music beneath her opening monologue. She effortlessly “noodled” around using what I call the “Adele” chord progression, … Read More

I once heard a story about the song “Old Man River,” which was written for the Broadway musical Showboat by the composer Jerome Kern and the lyricist Oscar Hammerstein. (Quick quiz – what famous “Real Book” tune did they also write together? The answer is at the bottom of this post.) As the story goes, … Read More