great scene last night with Grace Kelly making ‘ole man Withers proud chez Juan Enriquez w/ the incredible folks from @tedXboston.
*photo via @scottkirsner
Cumulative Experience and the Evolution of Genius
Modern-Day Theory of Genius: the theory, known in England as “the 10-year rule” and in the U.S., where it has been popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, the author of “Outliers,” as “the 10,000-hour rule.”
It states that to become successful at anything, you must spend 10 years working at it for 20 hours each week. Do so, however, and success is all but inevitable. You don’t have to be a genius—in fact, there’s no such thing.
Case Study: Charlie Parker, the father of bebop
As a teenager, he embarrassed himself by sitting in at Kansas City jam sessions before he had fully mastered the alto saxophone, thereby acquiring a citywide reputation for incompetence.
In 1937 the humiliation overwhelmed him, and he took a summer job at a Missouri resort and began practicing in earnest for the first time in his life.
Eight years later, he had metamorphosed into the glittering virtuoso who teamed up with Dizzy Gillespie to record “Ko-Ko,” “Groovin’ High” and “Salt Peanuts,” thereby writing himself into the history of jazz.
While the presence of Genius – an anomalic (and innate) propensity to learn and create – cannot be discounted as an enabler of success, we should not also discount the other factors contributing to a person’s ability to endure 10,000 hours in pursuit of a specific goal.
This level of endurance requires an “exceptional recipe” of passion, dedication, (genetics?) and energy, a combination as elusive as the oft-mentioned presence ofGenius.
Thus, the reason that Mozart was wildly successful, and his sister, only mildly, may be attributed to the presence of this Genius – or simply that he had more ingredients of the “exceptional recipe” – but in either case, Genius, however defined, is merely an argument of semantics. The common enablers (and the results) are the same.
*excerpts from wsj.com
“So What” is the first track on the 1959 Miles Davis and John Coltrane album Kind of Blue and is often credited as one of his best works.
It is one of the most well-known examples of modal jazz, set in the Dorian mode and consisting of 16 bars of D minor7, followed by eight bars of Eb minor7 and another eight of D minor7. This AABA structure puts it in the format of popular song structure.
The piano and bass introduction for the piece was written by Gil Evans for Bill Evans and Paul Chambers on Kind of Blue. An orchestrated version by Gil Evans of this introduction is later to be found on a television broadcast given by Miles’ Quintet (minus Cannonball Adderley who was ill that day) and the Gil Evans Orchestra; the orchestra gave the introduction after which the quintet produced a rendition of the rest of “So What”.
The distinctive voicing employed by Bill Evans for the chords that interject the head, from the bottom up three perfect fourths followed by a major third, has been given the name “So What chord” by such theorists as Mark Levine.
While the track is taken at a very moderate tempo on Kind Of Blue, it is played at an extremely fast tempo on later live recordings by the Quintet, such as Four and More.
The same chord structure was later used by John Coltrane for his standard “Impressions”.
cleaning a mouthpiece.
Somethin’ Else is a 1958 album by jazz musician Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, regarded as a landmark album in the hard bop and cool styles. This critically-acclaimed album is notable for the presence and prominent contributions of Miles Davis, in one of his few recording dates for Blue Note Records. Many critics and jazz fans consider Somethin’ Else to be among the greatest jazz albums of all time.
When alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley culled together this quartet, he grabbed three champions from seemingly disparate schools to complement his flinty solos: Miles Davis, the king of cool; Art Blakey, the thundering force of hard bop; Hank Jones, a veteran of swing; and Sam Jones, a versatile bassist adaptable to nearly any setting. The results are one of Blue Note’s most beloved albums. The open-ended beauty of “Autumn Leaves,” which features Davis beautifully stating the melody on muted trumpet, sounds like it could easily be an outtake from Kind of Blue (which it isn’t). The midtempo title track provides the centerpiece of this classic as Adderley echoes Miles’s swaggering melody before both unravel wonderful solos.
Cannonball Adderley…Sax, Miles Davis…Trumpet, Sam Jones…Double Bass, Hank Jones…Piano…Art Blakey…Drums. From the 1958 album Somethin’ Else.
His educational career was long established prior to teaching applied instrumental music classes at Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Cannonball moved to Tallahassee, Florida when his parents obtained teaching positions at Florida A&M University. Both Cannonball and brother Nat played with Ray Charles when Charles lived in Tallahassee during the early 1940s.Cannonball was a local legend in Florida until he moved to New York City in 1955, where he lived in Corona, Queens.
It was in New York during this time that Adderley’s prolific career began. Adderley visited the Cafe Bohemia (Oscar Pettiford’s group was playing that night) where he brought his saxophone into the club with him, primarily because he feared that it would be stolen. He was asked to sit in as the saxophone player was late, and in true Cannonball style, he soared through the changes, and became a sensation in the following weeks.
Prior to joining the Miles Davis band, Adderley formed his own group with his brother Nat after signing onto the Savoy jazz label in 1957. He was noticed by Miles Davis, and it was because of his blues-rooted alto saxophone that Davis asked him to play with his group.
Adderley joined the Miles Davis sextet in October 1957, three months prior to John Coltrane’s return to the group. Adderley played on the seminal Davis records Milestones and Kind of Blue. This period also overlapped with pianist Bill Evans’s time with the sextet, an association that led to recording Portrait of Cannonball and Know What I Mean?.
His interest as an educator carried over to his recordings. In 1961, Cannonball narrated The Child’s Introduction to Jazz, released on Riverside Records.
Fast Track Alto Saxophone Method - Book 1
This is a book and cd pack published by Hal Leonard. It’s intended for beginners to easily and quickly learn how to play the saxophone and is user-friendly so those who choose to self-study will learn from it as well. It has instructions, lessons, illustrations, pictures, standard notation and fingering chart.
crushing it
