For this first review I attended the Jazz Improvisation Ensemble concert here at the University of Redlands on Monday, November the 30th at eight in the evening in the Frederick Lowe Recital Hall. The concert featured two groups: the Eleven O’clock Jazz Improvisation Ensemble with charts that included “Sugar” by Stanley Turrentine, “Moon Alley” by Tom Harrell, and “Chicken Dog” by John Scofield; and the One O’clock Jazz Improvisation with charts that included “Joy Spring” by Clifford Brown, “Theme for Ernie” by Fred Lacey, and “Lyresto” by Kenny Burrell. For the in depth discussion, I have chosen to focus on “Chicken Dog” by Scofield.
This piece by Scofield featured a quintet type ensemble that had Victoria Batta on flute, Joseph Buschatzke on guitar, Benjamin Purper on electric bass, Daniel Murphy on …show more content…
What was interesting about this piece was the opening and closing vamping sections which allowed for some more room to improvise other than the sections in the middle. The opening vamp featured the electric bass as the driving force improvising on two main elements of walking bass lines and this riff idea that would emerge in the head, and underneath this the electric keyboard played a sparse chordal accompaniment along with the drummer playing a light rock-shuffle groove. The main sections of improvisation featured guitar, flute, and bass, but I liked the guitar’s solo because it was the clearer and more confident one of the three. His solo featured the hallmarks of improvisation techniques covered in the beginning Jazz Improvisation class such as: playing with ideas that found their roots in a chord or scale like style, creating variations on the main melodic ideas, sequencing some of these ideas to provide unity, and telling a story by altering the dynamic and pitch range levels to signal a
This piece by Scofield featured a quintet type ensemble that had Victoria Batta on flute, Joseph Buschatzke on guitar, Benjamin Purper on electric bass, Daniel Murphy on …show more content…
What was interesting about this piece was the opening and closing vamping sections which allowed for some more room to improvise other than the sections in the middle. The opening vamp featured the electric bass as the driving force improvising on two main elements of walking bass lines and this riff idea that would emerge in the head, and underneath this the electric keyboard played a sparse chordal accompaniment along with the drummer playing a light rock-shuffle groove. The main sections of improvisation featured guitar, flute, and bass, but I liked the guitar’s solo because it was the clearer and more confident one of the three. His solo featured the hallmarks of improvisation techniques covered in the beginning Jazz Improvisation class such as: playing with ideas that found their roots in a chord or scale like style, creating variations on the main melodic ideas, sequencing some of these ideas to provide unity, and telling a story by altering the dynamic and pitch range levels to signal a