Harmonic Development and Contrapuntal Techniques for the Jazz Pianist serves as a guide for harmonic expansion and development for jazz piano, offering pianists both a rationale and methods to improve contrapuntal hand techniques. The text focuses on the relationship between theory and execution and both of those components’ usefulness in creating a jazz sound at the piano. This kinaesthetic method provides the learner with a systematic approach to harmonic movement, revealing options that may not have been otherwise apparent. This method will allow pianists to add depth and dimension to their chord voicings in the same way that vocalists and wind instrumentalists give character and shape to the notes they create. Key features include musical examples ranging from singular chord construction to sophisticated harmonic progressions and song application. Performance exercises are provided throughout the text. Learners and instructors are encouraged to create their own exercises. Related ancillaries at harmoniccounterpoint.com include: Musical examples Audio tracks Performance exercises Written assignments Intended for the learner who is reasonably familiar with essential jazz harmony, this textbook will be both a significant resource for the advanced player and a fundamental component for the learner in a structured academic musical setting.

-- Stanley Persky, City University of New York

The Instant Composers Pool and Improvisation Beyond Jazz contributes to the expansion and diversification of our understanding of the jazz tradition by describing the history and practice of one of the most important non-American jazz groups: The Instant Composers Pool, founded in Amsterdam in 1967. The Instant Composers Pool describes the meaning of "instant composition" from both a historical and ethnographic perspective. Historically, it details instant composition’s emergence from the encounter between various overlapping transnational avant-gardes, including free jazz, serialism, experimental music, electronic music, and Fluxus. The author shows how the improvising musicians not only engaged with the cultural politics of ethnicity and race involved in the negotiation of the boundaries of jazz as a cultural practice, but transformed the meaning of music in society—particularly the nature of improvisation and performance. Ethnographically, The Instant Composers Pool encourages readers to reconsider the conceptual tools we use to describe music performance, improvisation, and creativity. It takes the practice of "instant composition" as an opportunity to reflect on music performance as a social practice, which is crucial not only for jazz studies, but for general music scholarship.

The first book to teach the necessary mechanisms in an organized format that will be used for improvising two lines at once on the guitar (bass lines and melody lines). The material covered in the method includes: All of the diatonic seventh arpeggios in both ascending and descending forms, organized by the root in the bass, third in the bass and the fifth in the bass. Scale fragments with both static and moving bass lines. Basic rhythms with moving lines and syncopation. Each of these sections is further broken down into individual chapters focusing on a specific aspect of the topic. The material is geared towards both the intermediate and advanced guitarist. Topics such as fingerings, finger stretches and finger independence are also discussed. Having taught professionally for 35+ years, the author has the experience and curriculum to help takes students to the next level. The book is suitable for guitarists interested in players such as Ted Greene, Chet Atkins, Howard Morgen, George Van Eps, Jimmy Wyble and Charlie Christian. Classical guitarists looking to build a foundation on learning how to improvise multiple lines, will find the material suitable for their technique. Although improvisation is the focus of the book, the material can also be used for composition and song writing.

Jazz: Research and Pedagogy is the third edition of an annotated bibliography to books, recordings, videos, and websites in the field of jazz. Since the publication of the 2nd edition in 1995, the quantity and quality of books on jazz research, performance, and teaching materials have increased. Although the 1995 book was the most comprehensive annotated jazz bibliography published to that date, several books on research, performance, and teaching materials were omitted. In addition, given the proliferation of new books in all jazz areas since 1995, the need for a new, comprehensive, and annotated reference book on jazz is apparent. Multiply indexed, this book will serve as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars in sorting through the massive amount of new material that has appeared in the field over the last decade.