Many thanks to Tommaso Starace for a challenging session in which we played:
“Beatrice” by Sam Rivers
“The Way You Look Tonight” by Jerome Kern
We started with the ballad “Beatrice” which the group managed to play through without too man problems at a slow tempo. Tommaso then suggested that we learn it by heart as performance is always better than when reading from the sheet music. To this end we took the tune in four bar sections and played through the arpeggios as a group followed by a few of us taking solos on the just memorised sequence. We did the remaining bars of the tune in the same fashion. I found this all particularly useful because even listening to the other solos while thinking about the chords gave the solos more sense.
In the second part of the session we worked through “The Way You Look Tonight” at a very brisk tempo; this caused an issue for most everyone at some point or another. One tip was that although the backing was going nineteen to the dozen, the soloing doesn’t have to follow suit.
Thanks again, Tommaso .