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This is Victor Wooten playing a solo medley while on tour with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. He starts with Norwegian Wood by the Beatles, before moving on to a series of Christmas songs that includes an excerpt from The Nutcracker, and The Christmas Song. Victor is, in my opinion, the best at forming chord-melody…

This is Herbie Hancock’s Watermelon Man. I think it’s a pretty good performance of the tune. The bari solo and and first alto solo were super virtuosic. I feel like they were all playing off each other really well. For example, the alto sax mirrored some of the bari sax’s playing. (1:58 similar to 1:21)…

This is a performance of Billie’s Bounce by Charlie parker by Andreas Oberg.  He is very influenced by George benson, reflected by the bluesy sound in his licks & also how he sings with his improvisation.  This is particularly impressive considering the highly chromatic and bebop nature of his licks.  I really like the repeated licks in his…

This is “Seven Minute Mind” by The Bad Plus, an avant-garde jazz band that I’ve been listening to a lot over the last few years. This piece is a cool experiment with time signatures. It changes meter every measure for the A section.  The layout is  6/4, 3/4, 6/4, 3/4, 7/8, 5/8, 7/8, 5/8, 5/4.…

I knew I’d post odd time signature stuff at some point, and what better place to start than the Mahavishnu Orchestra… This performance is crazy, it seems like all of the musicians were at their peak at this time, and has a lot of 60s-70s era influence on it.  John Mclaughlin is using an iconic…

  This is a video of Bill Frisell playing the jazz standard “The Days of Wine and Roses” Frisell is one of the most accomplished guitarists on the jazz scene today.  He has distinguished himself by playing in a lush style that is often hard to achieve on the guitar as notes have a tendency…

This is a video of Cory Henry playing a unique interpretation of John Coltrane’s Giant Steps. This piece is known for its unique harmonic structure and I really enjoy hearing artists try to give these changes a unique feel. Cory Henry and his band definitely approached the piece with a funk perspective. I’m incredibly impressed by the entire band’s…

Soulive is definitely one of my favorite jazz/funk groups, and “outrage” is one of my favorite tunes by them.  It has a very cool rock oriented feel with the pentatonic-y guitar riff.  I believe theres also the hendrix- dominant-sharp9 chord used as a big part of the riff which emphasizes the rock roots of the tune.  Eric…

This is a video of the Buddy Rich Big band performing Count Basie’s One O’ Clock Jump.  I find it particularly amusing that Buddy Rich appears to be performing in a bath robe.  As far as musicianship goes, this is the only group I know to feature a drummer, and I find that interesting as…

This is a video of one of my favorite drummers, Mark Guiliana, playing with Donny McCaslin on their original composition, “Stadium Jazz.”  As always, I am very impressed with the with Mark’s speed and precision while playing very fast and complicated rhythms.  I especially appreciate this piece because of how well all of the musicians…